


Sympathetic Magic

by ls269



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-08-12 23:44:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 50
Words: 159,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7953760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ls269/pseuds/ls269
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the first chapter of my huge sprawling SS/LE fanfic, Sympathetic Magic, which I wrote between 2008 and 2013 (when you see it, you'll understand why it took so long!) and posted on DeviantArt. I've been meaning to post it on AO3 for ages, but I can only work in like half-hour intervals when my baby is asleep, and I'm also trying to write original fiction in those precious half-hours, so this could take a while...   </p>
<p>The story follows Severus and Lily through their last two years at Hogwarts, but it's also focused on the Marauders, Narcissa and Lucius, Regulus Black, Poppy Pomfrey, and lots of OCs. No characters are really hated, except, I guess, for Bellatrix. It's AU, but I think quite respectful towards J.K Rowling's plots and characters. It gets extremely caught up in the emotional world of the characters, and can spend whole chapters in symbolic landscapes representing their souls (I'm not sure if that's really selling it, but it's the truth!) Anyway, I can't really describe it. It was my soul for almost five years, and I haven't re-read it in way too long, but I still hear from people asking me to make the story more wiely-accessible, so I'm going to post it here. Hope you enjoy it!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All is Full of Love

Students were racing up and down Platform Nine and Three Quarters. Steam from the engine was hanging tenderly about their shoulders like a tattered shawl. Snape felt as separate from the scene as if he’d been made of smoke himself. He made his way up the platform with dragging footsteps, jostled and elbowed by the excitable students, his stomach weighed down with a feeling of leaden gloom - he was going back to the muggle world. He was used to loneliness, but loneliness in hostile surroundings was another thing entirely. He seemed to feel the air getting thinner, warmer, more stifling, the further he walked from the Hogwarts Express.    
  
He felt as though he was a different species from the other students on the platform, as though he was caught up in a herd of stampeding buffalo and, for one bitter, weary moment, he longed to be one of them. It was a moment of weakness, he knew, because he usually cherished his separateness from these giggling imbeciles. He hated them as individuals, but he longed for what they amounted to.      
  
The platform was littered with obstacles, half-hidden in the steam. There were cats mewling and arching their backs, owls screeching and ruffling their feathers, in cages that had been temporarily forgotten by their owners. There were curses as trunks were dropped on other people’s feet, or students were shoved aside by older children who’d done all this before. The odd jinx flew above the heads of the assembled students, hit an innocent bystander, and caused eruptions of howling, tentacles and apologies.  
  
Some younger students were so excited to be home that sparks flew involuntarily from their wand-tips. A few of them were hovering some feet above the ground, and had companions dangling from the hem of their robes, trying to pull them back down.     
  
The platform smelled of smoke and sulphur from all the jinxes. The atmosphere was crackling with magic and expectation. The air was thick with it. But Severus couldn’t share it, wasn’t part of it - he was numb with a kind of sick, weary, familiar dread.  
  
Boys raced along the platform - scuffling, shoving, tousling hair, tripping each other up (these were all recognised gestures of affection). One boy was garrotting another with his school tie (this was borderline, but he probably meant well). A knot of Ravenclaw girls watching this wore exaggerated expressions of exasperation - hands on hips, eyes rolling, theatrical sighs - and then smiled disarmingly if one of the scuffling boys happened to look over.  
  
A first year Slytherin was leaning away from his mother disdainfully as she tried to pull him into a hug.  
  
“Of course they fed me properly - honestly, mother, if you can’t learn to control yourself, I’m getting straight back on that train.”  
  
The mother beamed, as if this was the cleverest thing she’d ever heard, and told him she’d missed him.  
  
Snape felt sick. In later years, the unreasonable affection of mothers for their children was going to upset him even more.  
  
Two Hufflepuff girls with red, round, tear-sodden faces were clinging to each other and sniffing wetly, gurgling their mutual affection. They told each other that they’d send an owl every day, that they couldn’t wait to be back together, that they _hated_ going home. Snape knew that they’d forget about each other in a week. People were so fake, so melodramatic, so stupid.      
  
That was when he felt a brief touch on his shoulder, and heard a low, lovely voice mutter “See you back home, cheerful.”  
  
It was Lily. She was smiling her arch, conspiratorial smile from under a curtain of dark red hair.  
  
Snape felt his stomach lurch and, choked with surprised emotion, couldn’t even manage a smile in return.    
  
Lily was an affectionate friend, but she knew that open affection between them would provoke jeers, incredulous stares and even jinxes from passing Gryffindors or Slytherins. She didn’t care, but she knew that Severus did, so, in the interests of a quiet life, (and compromising her principles for him yet again) she had taken to these subversive displays of friendship. Snape suspected that she was excited by the challenge: how to conceal her friendship, without curbing her affectionate impulses; how to please Severus, while still being herself. She was always walking that thin line, and not always succeeding - but her lively intelligence, and her loyalty to old friends, kept her trying.    
  
She turned into the crowd and disappeared from view - engulfed in a group of giggling girls, and then hidden behind a bulky Slytherin.  
  
The last glimpse of her that Severus caught was when she passed James Potter. He was at the centre of his little fan-club as usual, recounting a spectacular Quidditch move at the top of his voice, with wild hand gestures. His boasts grew still louder as Lily walked past.  
  
Lily turned her back on him, stifling an exaggerated yawn. Her companion giggled.  
  
Severus could not have loved her more. She made going home bearable. What was it to him if he was going back to a prison, while James Potter went home to a manor house? What did he care if his parents argued, and he had to breathe in the fumes of their mutual hatred for a few weeks? He had Lily all to himself for a while. That was worth anything.


	2. The Best of Both Worlds

Back in Spinner’s end, Snape was desolate. Lily wanted to spend time with her family and, in any case, he didn’t want to seem too keen to see her, so he kept his distance from her house for the first few days of the holidays, spending as much time as he could out of the house or submerged in his books, visualizing the magic he wasn’t allowed to perform, practising incantations and seething with resentment about Potter.    
  
Spinner’s end was not a place of action; it was a place to stew in resentment or longing. It was a kind of limbo world, where nothing ever happened, but nothing was ever forgotten.   
  
His parents had asked him a few questions about his term, and then resumed their constant arguing with increased vigour, as though they needed to catch up. His mother looked withered and malnourished whenever she wasn’t shouting. Performing magic and taunting Tobias Snape were the only things that made her look alive.      
  
Eileen Snape’s dark hair was fly-away and crackly; on the rare occasions that she performed magic, strands of it would stand out from her head in a kind of static halo. This spectacle was one of Snape’s earliest memories of magic: he always remembered how happy she looked, in the grip of that static exhilaration. This was also one of the reasons he didn’t wash his hair - because the same static effect occurred whenever he performed magic, unless his hair was particularly greasy.    
  
Eileen’s face was long, and taut with a general expectation of attack. She had long, sinuous limbs, but always walked around with her shoulders hunched and her arms crossed. This defensive posture, and her desire to be inconspicuous, Snape had inherited from her.  
  
She was brilliantly sensitive, which made her suffering all the more acute. He saw the way she flinched when his father spat or cursed, and the way she shuddered when he raised his voice. The years could not desensitize her to him.     
  
She hated him. She felt that he had made her betray her proud heritage, bring disgrace on her family. He had dragged her down into this hateful muggle slum, and then withdrawn into clouds of cigarette smoke and whisky fumes, leaving her alone. But hating him took up all her energy; she had very little to spare for Severus. She would sometimes snap out of her miserable trance for long enough to tell him that he needed new clothes - that his ancestors had set trends and created fashions in the Ministry of Magic, and that it was deplorable that one of their descendants should be reduced to this. These sporadic but tender outbursts would generally trail off into dark hints about his father’s ineptitude. “If your father could hold down a proper job, it wouldn‘t be like this. But he doesn’t understand what we are. He doesn’t understand what’s due to us.”   
  
Severus found this kind of talk pretty cryptic, because he didn’t understand what was due to them, either. He would have settled for a lack of shouting.  
  
Eileen Prince was a prisoner, but a complicit one. The door of her cell was wide open, but she had lost all knowledge of the outside world, and any desire to see the sky. All she cared about was revenging herself on her captors. So she stayed in her cell and waited for an opportunity.       
  
Snape had seen that hatred could bind people indissolubly - his mother and father were soldered together, and painfully, clumsily, like some lame, limping animal, they had to make their way through the world hand in hand.   
     
As a child, whenever it was possible, he would slip out of the house, and skulk around the streets, with their endless lines of red-brick houses, or watch the oozing flow of the nearby canal. His parents had never seemed to notice that he was gone, and he had relished the quietness, far away from their constant fights and the malicious rumble of the school playground.   
  
They had no money, and all of Eileen’s friends in the magical world had disowned her, so they’d sent Snape to the local primary school, confusing him with contradictory messages about how he was better than all the other children but he’d do best not to provoke them and to keep out of their way.    
  
Don’t draw attention to yourself, that was the only thing they agreed on. You’re superior but you have to hide. No-one must know that you’re different.   
  
Well, what was the point in being superior if nobody was allowed to know it?  
  
Snape developed a sneering resentment for the other school children - they made him jealous and disdainful at the same time. He didn’t want to be like them - it was clear that they were stupid, loud, hostile, little animals. They teased him about his name and his mismatched, oversized clothes. But he hated them all the more because he wanted to belong to them, to anybody. Much as he wanted to be separate, distinctive, special, he also wanted to be like somebody. Because it was lonely, sneering at people all the time.     
  
  
This school was also the first place he had ever seen Lily. To begin with, he knew her vaguely as a pretty girl who didn’t tease him. And no matter how superior boys are taught to feel, they’re always going to notice pretty girls who don’t tease them.   
  
Then, he saw her perform magic. She was in front of Snape in the dinner queue, chatting to her sister - a bony-faced blonde girl with a shrill voice who was whispering loudly about how the school bully’s parents didn’t live together.   
  
“Layla says they’re not even _married_. She says her mum told her that Dean Vernon’s dad was in _prison_. Bet you that’s where Dean’ll end up.”   
  
Lily made a non-committal noise. She was staring out of the window at the horse-chestnut tree in the sunlit playground. Snape would grow to recognise these abstracted moods of hers, where she noticed beautiful things and suddenly forgot where she was.   
  
No doubt her sister was used to them too, because she gave Lily a bony elbow to the ribs, making her start, and repeated: “His dad was in _prison_ , Lily!”   
  
Unfortunately, she had underestimated the force of her whisper. Dean Vernon was standing some way off, but he had heard his name, and the words ‘married’ and ‘prison’ and, dim as he was, Snape thought, he could conjecture the rest.    
  
He pushed his way through the queue towards them - there were a few muted ’Ow’s and ’Get off’s, but never any loud enough for Dean to hear, because everybody knew that his dad had been in prison, and that he had taught Dean how to kill someone with a single punch.    
  
“Whatchoo sayin’ about me?” he rumbled. He could speak perfect English really; this accent was affected to make him seem tougher - a move that was patently unnecessary when you saw his bulging muscles and lack of neck.   
  
Petunia gave a kind of whimpering gasp and said: “Nothing.”   
  
“Yeah, you was,” Dean said, pushing her shoulder with such force that she almost spun completely around. “You was sayin’ something about my dad.”      
  
“Get lost, Dean,” Lily said, her hands on her hips (this posture was to become familiar to Snape too). “No-one cares about your stupid dad.”   
  
There was a silence. The hall held its collective breath. Lily Evans had called Dean Vernon’s dad ‘stupid’.     
  
And then two things happened in quick succession. Dean raised his fists at Lily, and then suddenly Dean wasn’t there.   
  
From the startled grunts and swear-words that were suddenly issuing from the other end of the hall, they spotted him again, dangling from the basketball hoop, his stumpy legs flailing off the floor.     
  
It was at this moment - as she looked up at Dean Vernon dangling from the basketball hoop, with an expression somewhere between surprise, exhilaration and satisfaction -  that Snape first noticed her eyes. They were a startling, electric green, and they gave him goose-bumps.  
  
  
On the third day of the holidays, Lily came to call for him, politely ignoring the way Eileen Snape’s lip curled with contempt at the sight of her, and the way Tobias Snape leered at her hungrily. She had got used to these things - you had to put up with if you wanted to be friends with Severus.   
  
It worried her sometimes. She wondered where it would end, what her feelings for him would make her do but, for the moment, she could bear his cruel, bigoted parents, if it meant she got to see him.   
  
Snape, on the whole, was so happy to see her that he didn’t notice his parents’ reactions to her presence. He grabbed his keys, and the handful of muggle coins that he had managed to scrape together from around the house, and, doing his best to look casual, walked up the street with her without a backward glance at his front door.   
  
It was late afternoon. The sunlight had become horizontal, and was shining on the red-brick houses, turning the windows on one side of the street into blazing sheets of light. Every house looked as though it were on fire. Severus didn’t know why, but he found the sight soothing.   
  
The shadows were lengthening, and the first chill of evening was infusing into the air. The terrace of houses stretched, like an unbroken chain, as far as the eye could see. Spinner’s End seemed to have no end, which was just typical of the place.   
  
The river still oozed languidly, its current slowed by crisp packets, bottles, cans and the semi-submerged bones of shopping trolleys, but somehow the air had never been clearer. Snape felt as though he was back in the Hogwarts grounds, breathing that icy mountain air, the kind so cold that you could feel it dispersing through your veins long after you’d breathed it in.   
  
They went down to the canal-side and sat on the foot-bridge over the river, dangling their legs over the side - Lily’s were not long enough to reach the surface of the water, but she was doing her best to get the toes of her shoes wet, stretching her legs out until she was teetering precariously on the side of the bridge.    
  
They had been talking about the Dean Vernon incident, and Lily was trying to protest her innocence.  
  
“I’m telling you, all I thought was: I want him to go away. That’s it.”   
  
“You’re lucky he didn’t end up in Siberia,” said Snape.   
  
“But I didn’t want him to get hurt,” she protested.   
  
“Oh, come on,” Snape murmured in her ear, “not even a little bit?”  
  
Lily smiled grudgingly. “Maybe I wanted him to look stupid,” she admitted.   
  
“You didn’t need magic for that.”     
  
“I mean, he _did_ push my sister.”   
  
“Of course. He had it coming. When people get on the wrong side of you, they’d better watch out.”  
  
“I didn’t say that,” Lily interrupted coolly.    
  
Snape smiled contentedly. He was always teasing her like this. She was so nice, that it was fun to make her out to be a shameless, mean-spirited bully. There wasn’t a suspicion in his mind that it might get to her; he didn’t understand that she didn’t see herself as he did.        
  
“Was that the first time you used magic?” he asked.   
  
Lily shrugged. “For all I know.”   
  
She was stretching her legs towards the water. Snape was silent for a while, watching her dark red hair spill over her shoulders as she leaned forwards. It was jewel-bright in the sunshine, as red as the terraced houses in Spinner’s End. Severus suddenly felt a kind of excited warmth spreading through his body. It was half greed and half tenderness; it made him resent and revere her.   
  
“Do you think there’s fish in there?” she asked, peering into the foamy river.      
  
“Not living ones,” Snape replied.   
  
“I sort of always remember magic,” Lily said musingly. “I never knew what it was, but I always had this feeling that, if I tried hard enough, I could make things happen. Like the world was just waiting for me to say the word.”  
  
Snape smiled his fond, exasperated smile again, but said nothing.     
  
“When was the first time you ever used magic?” she asked  
  
A shadow stole over his face. “Oh,” he said, frowning. “It was when dad was hitting her - you know, my mum.”  
  
Lily turned her wide, green eyes on him, but he avoided her gaze, looking down at his shoes as they dragged in the murky water.     
  
“I cast this charm,” he went on, “I still don’t even know what it was. It held him up in mid-air by his throat and sort of choked him. Nearly killed him. He hated magic even more after that.”   
  
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said gently, after a small silence. “You were just a kid.”   
  
Snape shrugged. “I knew what I was doing. I wanted to kill him.”   
  
“And quite right too!” she replied. “But you didn’t; that’s the important thing.” She was silent for a moment, staring at her own shoes as they dangled above the water. “Why doesn’t she leave him?”   
  
“She can’t. She hates him too much. If she left, there’s the chance that he might find some peace. If she stays, she can torment him every minute until he dies. She doesn’t know anything outside that. It’s the only thing that makes her happy.”  
  
“I don’t blame her,” Lily said grimly.   
  
“No, but then, you don’t blame anyone, do you?”   
  
She looked up at him. “Do you blame her?”    
  
Severus considered. “No,” he said eventually, “but she shouldn’t have had me. If you’re going to start a war, you should try not to drag civilians into it.”  
  
Lily sighed. “I know it’s hard escaping,” she said. “You feel like a traitor for getting out, because you think you should help her.”  
  
“There’s no helping her,” Snape said. “She’s going to fight it out to the bitter end.”   
  
“Then you’ve got to get out,” Lily told him frankly. Her eyes were so alive with sympathy that Snape suddenly wanted to make his troubles seem less acute, so that she wouldn’t have to feel them so much. He was reminded of his mother’s intense sensitivity, but somehow turned outwards. A little smile creased his face.   
  
“I will,” he said. “We both will. We don’t belong in this place. We’ll do something better.”   
  
Lily shrugged, and watched a dragonfly that had settled on a drooping leaf beside her; it was shimmering electric blue in the heat haze, and looked as though it had flown straight out of another world - a world of tropical ferns and mists and dinosaurs.  
  
Snape knew Lily was easily distracted like this - beautiful things made her forget herself - but he suspected that her silence was due to something else.  
  
“You do want to get out of here, don’t you?” he prompted.   
  
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I just don’t want to forget. It’s hard to explain. I feel like you do; I don’t belong here but I don’t want to leave my family behind. I don’t want to live without them.”   
  
“They’ll never understand you!” he said impatiently.  
  
“Maybe not,” she said, with a mischievous smile, “but I won’t compromise. I won’t choose one world or the other. I want the best of both.”   
  
Snape sighed with exasperation, and gestured around at the uniform houses and the rubbish-filled river. “How could you miss any of this when you’re at Hogwarts?”   
  
“It’s part of me.” She leaned back on the palms of her hands and tilted her head to the sky, warming her face in the sun, closing her eyes in the brightness. “Anyway, this is good, isn’t it? Right now? Our friendship? That’s part of the muggle world. In the magical world, you don’t want to know me.”   
  
Snape spluttered and turned red, but he could see that she was smiling playfully.   
  
“That’s not fair,” he mumbled.   
  
“It is kind of fair. You don’t like Mary Macdonald, and she’s muggle-born.”   
  
“That’s because she’s incredibly irritating,” Snape said, half-smiling himself now. “She never stops giggling - and if I sounded like a banshee with the hiccoughs every time I laughed, I’d try to be serious as much as possible.”   
  
Lily managed to turn her smile into a disapproving frown. He decided, pretty as she looked when she was angry, not to press the subject.   
  
“My point is,” he said, “that I find plenty of pure-bloods irritating too.”   
  
“But how many muggle-borns do you find completely non-irritating?”   
  
“Just you. Except when you make up words like ‘non-irritating’.”  
  
Lily nudged him peevishly. “Are you saying that I don’t annoy you?”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“What, never?”   
  
Snape shook his head.  
  
“There’s nothing I do that irritates you?”   
  
“Well, this conversation’s quite annoying,” said Snape.   
  
Lily laughed beautifully. “I knew it,” she said.


	3. The Vinculus Charm

The fifth-year started and so, too, did the arguments. It was mainly due to the heady combination of pressure, Potter and puberty.  
  
“Do you like him?”  
  
“No!”    
  
“Why are you going to the ball with him, then?”  
  
Lily unwillingly looked up from her book. They were sitting in the library, at a table next to a dusty, cob-webbed window that looked out over the lake. There were so many spiders skulking around the window-pane that the sunlight made spider-shaped patterns on their table. Lily had been running her fingers lovingly down the spine of one of her favourite library books, _Sympathetic Magic_.   
  
“Because Dumbledore asked me to,” she said simply.   
  
“Why?”  
  
She smiled shyly. “Because I'm a good student, and he thinks I'll make a good impression on Janus.”  
  
“What exactly does 'making a good impression' on him entail?”  
  
Lily laughed. “Nothing untoward. I'm just supposed to be a model representative of the school, to-” she imitated McGonagall's crisp tones, “foster the growth of International Magical Co-operation.”  
  
“And this absolutely has to consist of you being bored to death by a surly half-troll, who won't stop reciting gob-stones statistics and can't even pronounce your name?”   
  
She giggled again and Madam Pince, appearing suddenly from behind the nearest bookshelf, hushed her.   
  
“Sorry. Sorry, Madam Pince,” Lily whispered. She was usually on excellent terms with the Hogwarts librarian, since they both had an almost carnal affection for books. Lily seemed to have a lot of tenderness, but was too shy to bestow this on people, so she protected and cared-for her books. Snape was considering getting her a pet but knew that it would probably not be so informative. Unless he managed to get her a sphinx. And then she would probably never bother talking to anything else, because Lily was addicted to puzzles, and had been known to forego sleep until she had solved them. When the Ravenclaw portrait had asked her a riddle for a password, she had hurried away and returned an hour later, with a hastily-written essay, which she read out, while an interested crowd of Ravenclaws formed around her, all forgetting about getting into their common room in their haste to add substantive points or point out flaws in her argument. This could only happen with the Ravenclaws, who had rather taken to Lily after that. She had, however, completely failed to charm the Slytherins.   
  
“Anyway,” she said, when Madam Pince had withdrawn back into the shadows, “there's nobody else I want to go with that's going to ask me.”   
  
“Who do you want to go with that _isn't_ going to ask you?”  
  
He had said this rather louder than he'd meant to. Madam Pince lost her temper. “That's it! Out! OUT!”   
  
Hurriedly stuffing books into their schools bags, they left. The librarian's piercing, reproachful whispers, somehow bewitched to follow them, hastened their steps as they sped down the corridor.   
  
“God, I wish she wouldn't do that!” Lily exclaimed, as soon as they had reached the Entrance Hall. “I was underlining something in _One Hundred Magical Herbs and Fungi_ in the Common Room last night, and suddenly I heard her voice hissing in my ear: 'Library books are not to be written in!' Made me spill ink all over my Dragon's Blood essay! I honestly think she’s got the whole school under surveillance.”  
  
Snape, who was still thinking about Janus, and all the people that Lily might want to go to the ball with, didn’t respond. They made their way down to the Entrance Hall. It was a bright day, and shafts of sunlight streamed through the high leaded windows in the corridors; the effect of all this brightness was to make Lily sparkle and Snape squirm.     
  
“Will you come to the Magical Ethics Club tonight?” she asked, suddenly eager. “We’re discussing whether use of the Unforgivable Curses is justifiable in fighting the Dark Arts.”   
  
Snape gave her an exasperated smile. Lily had started the Magical Ethics Club in spite of lukewarm enthusiasm from the two or three people she had managed to induct as members. No Slytherin had ever set foot in it, because ethics were inconvenient things to the ambitious. As Voldemort gained in strength, however, even Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws were beginning to come to the conclusion that ethics were all very well if you could persuade your enemies to abide by them, but if not, they made you distinctly vulnerable.    
  
“Slughorn’s coming,” she added, as though she genuinely thought this was an incentive.     
  
Snape sighed. “Thanks, but if I wanted to see Slughorn drooling all over you, I’d start paying attention in Potions.”   
  
There was a pause. When Lily replied, her voice was steely. “He likes me because he thinks I’m clever.”   
  
Snape gave her an appraising look, wondering how far he could push this topic. “Margot Holloway’s clever, but he doesn’t fawn over her like a devoted House Elf.”  
  
A playful smiled curled the sides of Lily’s mouth for a moment. “You don’t think I’m smarter than Margot Holloway?”    
  
If Snape hadn’t known Lily to be incapable of spite, malice or even long-term resentment, he would have said that she felt about Margot Holloway the way he himself felt about James Potter. The two girls fascinated each other, but were very competitive.   
  
He shrugged. “Yes, in every way that matters. You’re more creative than she is. It’s just that creative people are inconsistent.”  
  
Lily gave him a look that comprised fondness, fury and amusement. “I love your diplomatic insults.”   
  
“That was a diplomatic compliment,” he replied. They walked on in silence for a while, then Snape stopped suddenly and said. “I could get you out of it, if you like.”  
  
“Get me out of what?”  
  
“Going to the ball with Janus. If he's boring you, I'll start a fight and we can slip away.”  
  
Lily shook her head in disbelief. “Were you listening to all that stuff about fostering the growth of International Magical Co-operation?”   
  
“I won't fight Janus,” Snape explained, as though this was obvious. “I'll start insulting you, and the fighting will just sort of spread around us.”   
  
“You might get hurt,” she said.   
  
Snape stared at her. Nobody, _nobody_ , had ever voiced this concern before. He went on, talking rather fast: “There's this thing we can do with our wands. The Vinculus Charm. I read about it in _Agrippa’s Almanacke_. If we cast spells at each other, any spells, at the same time, they'll collide in mid air and blind everyone around us with a flash of light.”   
  
“Temporarily?” Lily asked.   
  
Snape shrugged. “Oh, yeah. I mean, they'll see spots in front of their eyes for a few days, but basically they'll be fine. We just won't do it in front of any teachers because they might know about the charm. I think it's old magic, though.” He paused. She was listening excitedly, her bright green eyes trained on him. With difficulty, he remembered what he was saying, and went on: “The book said that Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff used it to halt a near-fatal wizard's duel between Gryffindor and Slytherin.”    
  
Lily was positively glowing with interest. “Show me,” she said.     
  
The _Almanacke_ turned out to be a battered green book with no words on the cover. Snape suspected it had been re-covered at one point in order to look more innocent, because the book inside was filled with illustrations of monstrous beasts and horrifically botched transfigurations. They read it in a dungeon classroom outside the Slytherin common-room, because Lily wasn’t allowed inside.  
  
She watched him flick through chapters with titles like: ‘Cruel but effective’, and ‘Only to be used in sparsely populated areas’, and the intriguing final chapter ‘Absolute last-resorts’.   
  
“Is this _dark_ magic?” she whispered. Again, interest had overcome her disapproval, and Snape smiled.   
  
“In as much as it is intelligent magic, yes.”  
  
Lily raised her eyebrows, so he went on: “You don’t know how often I ask teachers if something could be done, only to hear them answer: ‘Yes, but it mustn’t be done’. The only people who are testing the limits of what magic can do are the ones with a bit of moral flexibility.”   
  
“That isn’t true!” she whispered heatedly. “Dark magic is the easiest magic there is! How moronic to kill something, or torture something, or blow something up! Think how much easier it is to destroy something than to fix it.”  
  
“Well, if that’s true, then the best way to test the limits of what magic can do is to destroy something, so that it _can_ be fixed.”   
  
“I don’t think we’ll ever be short of wizards to destroy things, Severus,” she said drily. “There’s absolutely no need to add to their number.”   
  
She flicked through the pages, pausing to say thing like: ‘Oooh, I haven’t seen this before. ‘Transfiguring curse scars and magical marks’…”   
  
“That’s so you can hide them, and pose as a normal person, if the Aurors are after you.”  
  
“But it would also be valuable for magical medicine, wouldn’t it? Hiding disfiguring scars? I mean, it’s the next best thing to actually healing wounds caused by Dark curses. I wonder if the principles of this spell could be adapted?”  
  
Snape shrugged helplessly. There was an expression on his face that Lily’s conversation often evoked: a sort of fond exasperation. He might have been listening to the ravings of a beloved child.   
  
“Anyway, _this_ is the Vinculus charm.” He opened the book to the chapter on ‘Diversionary tactics’.   
  
“This book really is written with the Dark witch or wizard in mind, isn’t it?” she said wryly.   
  
Heads together, they both read the description of the charm.   
  
  
‘The quasi-mythological status of the four Hogwarts founders is such that it is impossible to determine which, if any, of the stories told of them may have had a basis in fact. The story of Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff’s close friendship, however, is one of the oldest, and therefore might be deemed more reliable than some. With little in common to begin with – one being fiercely, vociferously intellectual and the other rather quiet and unassuming – the two women had little time for one another. However, both perceiving the dangerous hatred that had developed between Gryffindor and Slytherin, they decided that, for the protection of the school and its students, they should take steps to defend themselves against the terrifying and ill-moderated powers of their male colleagues.   
  
Amongst other protective spells, they cast the Vinculus charm, a spell of great antiquity even then, in which two wands are bonded, so that, whatever spells they shoot towards each other, the result is always a blinding flash of light that disables anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity (the ‘vicinity’ being approximately a two mile radius). They used the charm to blind Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin when they duelled prior to Slytherin’s final departure from the school. The story tells us that this duel had already decimated half the castle, and caused avalanches and forest fires in the surrounding mountains. Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff are generally credited with the subsequent rebuilding of the school.   
  
The drawback of the Vinculus charm is that it is fuelled by trust, and will not work if the owners of the wands mistrust each other.’    
  
  
The Summer Ball was unhelpfully right before the fifth-years took their Ordinary Wizarding Level exams and, as a result, most people seemed to regard it as their last chance to have fun, ever. Nervous excitement was rife. Brains that had been crammed full of astronomy statistics, the dates of goblin rebellions, and the twelve uses of dragon’s blood, were now going to be saturated with alcohol, and many were under the distinct impression that, if they were sick, they would throw up ancient runes.  
  
Snape waited in the entrance hall, trying - and succeeding, as he usually did - to be inconspicuous, because he was ashamed of his ragged dress robes and even a little ashamed of his date.   
  
He was taking a fourth-year Slytherin girl to the ball: Sylvia Easterbrook. She wasn’t anywhere near as glamorous as her name suggested. She had muddy blonde hair, a rather pointed nose and a high, spiteful voice a bit like Lily’s sister’s. Her favourite topic of conversation was her prestigious wizarding ancestry. She was preternaturally thin and, like Peeves, the sight of chaos and pain greatly excited her. He suspected that his reputation for dark magic was the only reason she had chosen to go to the ball with him (that, and the fact that fourth-years didn’t get to go to the ball unless somebody from the fifth year or above asked them).  
  
She was wearing grey silks, that looked so ancient they seemed positively organic. They didn’t seem to move as fabric ought to. Snape wondered whether they had been bewitched to seem as though they were surrounded by a slight breeze. Their rustling sounded like whispering close-to. Around her neck, she wore a silver pendant shaped like a serpent, studded with emeralds.     
  
He saw Sylvia looking coldly at his tattered dress robes when she arrived, but ignored this. He was searching the crowd for Lily, and hadn’t really noticed anybody else. They weren’t allowed to move into the Great Hall until Janus and his fellow Durmstrang delegates arrived, so he would be sure to see her.   
  
After a few minutes she came down the marble staircase, sticking rather close to Mary Macdonald. She was breathing apprehensively. This wouldn’t ordinarily have been noticeable but the low cut of her dress did kind of draw the eye.     
  
She looked very pretty. She was wearing a white satin dress and, around her neck was a little ruby from the Gryffindor hourglass that counted House Points. Snape had given this to her after the hourglass got smashed open in a memorable duel between Avery and James Potter. It glittered darkly next to her pale skin, almost exactly matching the colour of her wine-red hair.  
  
Snape saw, with a rush of hatred, that James Potter, too, was staring at her. When she passed him, he smiled at her, but Lily averted her gaze coldly and walked on. Catching Snape’s eye, she smiled conspiratorially and raised her eyebrows at Potter’s back, as if to say: ‘What an idiot.’   
  
Snape grinned at her.  
  
Sylvia nudged him sullenly. “Mudblood scrubs up pretty nicely, don’t you think?”   
  
Snape shrugged.    
  
“Still, it’s pointless,” Sylvia gave a contemptuous wave of her spindly arm. “She’ll never get a pure-blood wizard to marry her.”   
  
Snape raised his eyebrows. “Is _that_ her plan?” he asked dryly, still looking at Lily. “I had no idea.” He gave a thin smile and added, “Still, at least I’m safe from her machinations.”   
  
Sylvia evidently did not wish to discuss Snape’s hybrid bloodline. She focussed instead upon his wizarding connections. “My uncle Orion says he was at school with your mother. Wasn’t her name Eileen Prince?”   
  
Snape shrugged again. He didn’t like to think about his mother.  
  
“She was the last of the Princes, I believe.”  
  
“She’s not dead,” Snape said irritably, but Sylvia didn’t seem to have heard him.   
  
“A great wizarding name…” She trailed off, dreamily. “I wonder you didn’t take her name when you came to school. You, at least, have _some_ claim to it.”   
  
Snape surveyed her coldly. Sylvia, however, seemed oblivious to it.   
  
“I have a very distant connection with the Princes. My great, great aunt Matilda married Moribund Prince in the nineteenth century…”   
  
Snape had ceased to listen to her. Lily had been joined by Hector Janus, who was kissing her hand in what Snape considered to be an unnecessarily lingering fashion. He was pleased to see, however, that Lily was trying to snatch it back and, when he eventually released her, she wiped the back of her hand covertly on her dress.   
  
“I have a connection with all the great wizarding families,” Sylvia was saying, “the Lestranges, the Blacks, the Peverells - though, I don’t generally advertise _that_ fact, they’ve become rather degenerate recently. Filled with blood-traitors like that Potter.”   
  
At this, she indicated James Potter, who was leading a pretty blonde into the hall. Snape dimly recognised her as a Gryffindor sixth-year called Malificent. She was peering nosily at all the couples and making snide remarks about their out-of-date dress-robes. Potter, it seemed, who could have taken any number of mildly attractive smart girls to the ball, had opted for the most attractive and most idiotic that he could possibly find. He was making ambivalent noises in response to Malificent’s questions. His eyes were still on Lily.   
  
The Great Hall seemed even bigger than usual, with its long tables missing. They had been replaced by myriad little circular tables surrounding a wide dance floor. The floating candles overhead were burning lots of different colours, and there seemed to be mirrors and reflective surfaces everywhere, giving the hall the look of a treasure-trove, sparkling with jewels. The stars in the enchanted ceiling were so bright that they looked like part of the decoration.  
  
At the end of the hall, the raised platform where the staff table usually stood had been converted into a makeshift stage for a wizard’s orchestra. These were different from muggle orchestras - and included such ‘instruments’ as warbling toads, harps that fired arrows into the crowd as they played and crystal flutes that glowed a different colour with each note. Snape privately thought that this was unnecessary. In fact, he strongly suspected that it was just showing-off.  
  
Lily played clarinet, and had tried to join the orchestra in her first year. The music teacher, Professor Arcturius, had never seen or heard a clarinet before. When asked what it did, Lily replied, with the skill for lateral thinking that had served her so well during her first few years in the wizarding world: “It makes a nice sound.” Professor Arcturius had replied that this wasn’t enough, so Lily had persisted: “It can control the emotions of the audience.”   
  
“Indeed?” asked Professor Arcturius, brightening. “In what way?”   
  
“Well, it can make people sad, or happy, depending on the notes I play.”  
  
A few people in the surrounding orchestra had sniggered. Professor Arcturius was staring dubiously at the clarinet. “But it’s made of wood. Does it have a core of some magical substance, like unicorn hair?”   
  
Lily, trapped in a web of half-truths, had felt the colour rise in her face. She’d stubbornly picked up her clarinet and played the saddest song that she could think of. She played well, and Professor Arcturius listened. One of his eyebrows, seemingly of its own accord, had risen almost to meet his hairline, while the other remained stationary.   
  
When she had finished, he’d said. “My dear… that was lovely. Very… subtle. It’s just that sounds in a wizard orchestra are… bigger. Nobody would be able to hear your Carry-Net. A wizard orchestra does not simply move its audience, it carries them away.”      
  
Lily had been very upset by this. Her mood had not been improved by Snape’s well-meaning suggestion that the wizard orchestra had been invented by ‘some flashy Gryffindor’.    
  
Of course, magical instruments had been a big problem in the school when Severus and Lily had first arrived. There was an instrument called a Collapser, which emitted notes that had physical powers. There was a note that made your nose bleed, a note that made the audience hover a few inches in the air, even a note (much sought after by some of the older boys at the school, but never, to Snape’s knowledge, found) that made everybody’s clothes fall off.   
  
Collapsers (and, in fact, the entire school orchestra) had been banned at Hogwarts after one memorable performance in which various audience members had been thrown painfully across the room and, in one case, through a window, though everyone was prepared to admit that the music that had accompanied the chaos had been very beautiful.   
  
When Snape had told Lily about this, it had caused one of those rare and exciting moments when vindictive pleasure completely illuminated her features. Though Snape loved Lily the way she was, he had often considered that it would be worth trying to make her into a Death Eater, just to see this wonderful expression reappear with greater frequency.          
  
The band started to play an eerie waltz, and Janus led Lily onto the dance floor. Her soft red hair reflected the jewel-bright candles dazzlingly. Snape noticed that she had let her hair fall over her right eye, as though she wanted to hide behind it. She often did this when she was nervous. And she probably knew that she had great cause to be nervous, because several of the Slytherins were muttering about this being a ‘disgrace to the school’.   
  
Leaving Sylvia hovering by the punch-bowl (she was already on her fourth glass, and Snape assumed that excessive-drinking was another glorious tradition of her wizarding ancestors), he walked around the outer circle of the crowd, staring at the waltzing couple in the centre. At one point, he almost walked into James Potter, who had also been stalking around the outer edge of the circle, looking at the dancers. They had exchanged looks of deepest hatred, and moved off in opposite directions. Malificent, Snape noticed, was also hovering by the punch-bowl, a couple of inches from Sylvia. As he approached, he distinctly heard her mutter: “That dress Evans is wearing is so last-season.”   
  
Sylvia, who liked things to be last-season and despised innovation of any kind, replied, “I think it looks very cheap and flashy. She probably bought it.” A pronounced sneer came into Sylvia’s voice: “I inherited mine. It’s been in my family for generations. It was made for my great, great, great grandmother, Claudia Black.”  
  
Malificent evidently wished she hadn’t initiated this conversation. She took the punch that Sylvia offered her and downed it in one.   
  
“All the women in my family were very slim, as you can see,” Sylvia went on boastfully and Snape, who was also having a glass of punch pressed into his hand, thought of a spell he’d seen in one of the books in the Restricted Section: ‘Dark Diets: Bewitch those Extra Pounds onto the Hips of your Worst Enemy.’ He wondered vaguely which girl had ended up with all the fat siphoned off from the women in Sylvia’s family. A muggle-born witch, no doubt. He made a mental note to warn Lily about this the next time he saw her.   
  
There were other dancers making their way onto the dance floor now, and Snape saw Janus lead Lily by the hand out of the throng. They settled at one of the tables around the dance floor. Snape saw, with some interest, that Lily had a polite but vacant smile frozen on her lips. He moved closer, hidden behind some burly Slytherin seventh-years, so that he could hear their conversation.   
  
“My father vas Gob-Stones Champion at Durmstrang from 1954 to 1961. Every vone of his years at school, he beat all the competition. I grew up vith Gob-stones and iff I got sqvirted in the face, I vasn’t allowed to vash for veeks and veeks, so that I learned from my mistakes.”   
  
Lily choked on her butterbeer, torn between horror and amusement. “That’s terrible,” she murmured, when she had recovered herself.   
  
“It vas a very lonely childhood, as you can imagine. I used to pretend my Gob-Stones vere my friends…”   
  
Lily looked as though she didn’t quite know how to respond to this, so she gave him a brave smile and said nothing.   
  
“But it vas all worth it, to bring honour and glory to my school, my country and my family. The very first Gob-Stones tournament that I took part in, I beat Karkaroff, who vas a seventh year, in an epic game that lasted two veeks.”   
  
Lily caught sight of Severus, and her eyes were pleading. Smiling, he pretended he hadn’t seen her, and turned to pick up a butterbeer from the table behind them.   
  
“It vas not until the seventy-fourth round that things really started to go my vay…”   
  
“Snape!” Lily called desperately, and Severus turned to look at her.   
  
“Yes, Evans?” he asked coolly.   
  
Lily glared at him. “I expect you think that my dancing with the Durmstrang delegate is a disgrace to the school, or something?” she said meaningfully.   
  
Severus hesitated, licked his lips, and then decided he couldn’t tease her any more. His face assumed its accustomed sneer. “I do, as it happens, Evans. Your kind don’t belong in this school.” He thought of Sylvia and gained sudden inspiration. “You’re corrupting decent wizarding families with your devious muggle ways.”    
  
She glared at him, probably a little harder that she would have done if he had saved her from Janus straight away. “How dare you? I have just as much right to be here as you do.”   
  
“No, you have half as much right, because you’re entirely common, whereas I at least have one magical parent.”   
  
Janus stepped in at this moment. “She iss not common!” he protested. Turning to Lily, he said quietly. “I am thinking this should not be allowed.”  
  
“Vy… er… why don’t you get a teacher?” she asked suddenly.   
  
Janus did not move. He was glaring at Snape.   
  
“I’ll be fine,” she added quickly.   
  
Janus slouched off. Lily turned back to Snape, and a smile flitted briefly across her face. People were starting to look at them now. “You’re just jealous because I always beat you - ”  
  
“Beat me?” Severus echoed derisively. “Ha! It’s only because you’re always smarming up to the teachers…”   
  
Lily had pulled out her wand: “You take that back!”   
  
“Lucky you ended up in a house full of blood-traitors and arrogant little creeps, you Gryffindor Scum!”   
  
“Slytherin thug!” she shouted.   
  
This was the signal to cast the Vinculus charm. Snape pulled at his wand and growled: “Stupefy!”. At the same time, he heard her shout: ‘Expelliarmus’. The spells met in mid-air, but what exactly happened after that, Snape didn’t know, because he had shut his eyes. He could see the light through his eye-lids, though, and felt a warmth pass through him. It was like Lily’s touch - it comforted and calmed and smelled of her shampoo. As the light flickered out, the warmth didn’t leave him. It settled comfortably in his chest, like a cat that had curled up on top of his heart.   
  
A curious little half-smile creased his face as he opened his eyes. She was staring at him, also grinning with exhilaration. Her annoyance at his hesitation seemed to have vanished. Everybody else was stumbling around, clutching their eyes.  
  
Severus thought that they had better move before Lily’s sympathy got the better of her, because she was biting her lip and looking around at the Great Hall with an expression of guilt and amazement. “I can‘t believe we just did that,” she whispered.   
  
Severus grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the doorway then, laughing, they ran through the rain, across the lawns to the greenhouses.   
  
In Greenhouse Three, they sat side by side on the low wall that separated the plants from the work area. Snape conjured a fire in front of some Devil’s Snare that had been snaking towards them, noticing with pleasure that she appreciated the wisdom of this action, and they warmed their hands beside it. The Devil’s Snare withdrew back into the shadows and sulked beyond the flickering pool of fire-light.  
  
Snape was feeling extremely contented. He could spend time with Lily, without any of the Slytherins teasing him for it (in fact, he was sure the Slytherins would praise him extravagantly for his attack in the Great Hall), he had sneaked two bottles of butterbeer (her favourite drink) away from the scene of devastation, and her wet dress was clinging to her body in ways that made him exceptionally glad that there was not much light in the greenhouse with which to be seen.   
  
She, too, was smiling, though shivering, and she gave him a look of fond exasperation, as she said: “’Corrupting decent wizarding families with your devious muggle ways’”   
  
“Yeah, my date thinks you’re trying to get a pure-blood wizard to marry you.”  
  
“Well, I am,” she replied sarcastically. “My goal is the whole-sale destruction of wizarding society, didn‘t you know that? I plan to give birth to a race of filthy half-bloods. I think I caught Potter’s eye. Maybe I can start with him…”  
  
Snape’s smile vanished instantly. “That’s not funny,” he said.   
  
Lily laughed. “That Malificent he’s with” she said. “I’ve tutored her for Remedial Potions. If you want her to understand something, you have to think up Quidditch analogies. ‘Now, Malificent, using a bezoar is like catching the Golden Snitch, and all the other antidote recipes are like scoring a goal with the Quaffle…’  
  
Snape privately thought that you would have to be very thick for something Lily said to not get through to you.    
  
They drank some more butterbeer, during which there was a lot more giggling at the phrase ‘I vasn’t allowed to vash for veeks and veeks’.  
  
Recovering from her laughter, Lily said: “He was very sweet really. And he had a terrible childhood. I wonder if he’s looking for me...”   
  
Snape wanted to forestall any interference from Lily’s conscience, so he quickly changed the subject. “I heard you got a careers talk from a St. Mungo’s Healer.”   
  
Lily laughed again, almost choking on her butterbeer. With difficulty, she suppressed her smile and gazed at him solemnly. “You’ll never believe who it was,” she said.      
  
“Who?”   
  
“Bernadette Potter.”   
  
Snape raised his eyebrows. “What relation is she to our favourite Seeker?”   
  
“Mother.” Lily said, more solemnly still.   
  
“You’re _joking_.”   
  
Lily shook her head. She was smiling one of her wicked, conspiratorial smiles, (the kind that always made him feel she was sharing more with him than she ever would with anyone else) and her green eyes glittered in the firelight.  
  
With difficulty, he forced his mind back onto the subject of Bernadette Potter. “I always imagined Potter’s mum strutting around some old manor house in the country, sipping tea and ordering house-elves to torture themselves for chipping her tea-cups.”  
  
“I too was very surprised to discover that she had a calling besides spoiling her son,” Lily agreed, grinning. “But she was really helpful. She’s ever so clever.”   
  
Snape tilted his head to one side thoughtfully. “Well,” he said, “she’s obviously not that clever. She wasn’t clever enough to take a contraceptive potion on the night her son was conceived, for example.”  
  
Lily laughed so hard that she spat out a bit of butterbeer.      
  
When she had recovered, she glared at him in playful outrage. “You’re like every other Slytherin, you know. Your methods are just different. You’re still trying to kill me, only with laughter, instead of Dark Curses.”   
  
Snape nodded sagely. “I’ve only been posing as your friend these past five years in order to make you choke on your butterbeer.”   
  
Lily, who had been looking over his shoulder, suddenly smiled. She moved closer to him on the wall and whispered excitedly. “Hey, Sev! You want to get back at Potter? Kiss me.”   
  
“What?”  
  
“He’s watching us. He likes me, right? Kiss me.”   
  
And, without waiting for a response, Lily leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.   
  
When she pulled away, Snape was unable to look at her. He felt hot and stupid, and stubbornly directed his gaze at a clump of lichen on the wall between them. Lily put her fingers underneath his chin and gently lifted his head to look at her. She was smiling, though rather nervously, and biting her lip.  
  
“I think he’s gone,” she said, after a while.   
  
Snape nodded stupidly. He couldn’t think of anything to say. She was still touching the side of his face.   
  
“Well, I guess I’d better go to bed,” she murmured shyly. “Goodnight, Sev.”  
  
And, paralysed with joy, hope, desire, fear, and embarrassment, Snape watched her go.


	4. The Hypocritic Oath

Snape and Lily were sitting beside the lake in the Hogwarts grounds, long before it became such an important land-mark on the map of Snape’s bitter recollections, long before he started to think of it as the place where his life fell apart. Right now, he liked it. How could you refrain from liking a place where Lily was leaning on her elbows, staring down at her reflection in the water, and complaining about Potter? It was paradise.   
  
“And he lost me all those points I won from Professor McGonagall for knowing about Switching Spells, and I’ll never get them back, because I can’t be as good as Potter can be _bad_ ,” she said petulantly, her red hair trailing inches away from the surface of the water.   
  
Severus sighed contentedly. The glare of the sun on the water was blinding, so he had turned away from it, and was leaning against the trunk of a beach tree on the bank. From here he could see the shadow cast by the castle, creeping over the lawn that lead down to the gates. It didn’t touch Lily, though. Somehow, no shadows ever did.   
  
“His mum’s nice, though,” Lily said, because she had an annoying habit of looking for the good in people.   
  
Severus raised his eyebrows. “You mean in spite of her failure to take contraceptive potions when she ought to?”  
  
Lily’s pout spread into an involuntary smile, but she didn’t say anything.    
  
“She’s just as bad as the rest of them,” Snape went on. “She’s taken the Hypocritic Oath.”   
  
“The what?”    
  
Severus felt the unfamiliar thrill of knowing something she didn’t, but he didn’t betray it. “The Hypocritic Oath,” he repeated. “Every Healer has to take it. You swear that you’ll do everything in your power to preserve life, unless that life is muggle.”   
  
“I’m not taking it,” she said fiercely.    
  
“You have to. They won’t let you work in a Hospital or Surgery if you don’t.”   
  
“I’ll go freelance.”   
  
“You’ll go to Azkaban,” he replied, in the tone of fond exasperation he reserved just for Lily. Most people exasperated him, but with Lily, incredulity was softened into wonder. He couldn’t believe the things she believed – he couldn’t share her recklessly optimistic view of the world – but it was still wonderful that it existed, especially in somebody who’d been told she didn’t belong in the magical world ever since she’d arrived there.    
  
“I know what I’ll do!” she exclaimed, oblivious to his cynicism, as she usually was. “I’ll set up one of those alternative medicine places in a muggle town. I’ll pretend to heal them with crystals and whale-song, but I’ll actually have my wand up my sleeve, and I’ll be casting non-verbal healing spells – or even verbal ones, if I turn the whale-song up really loud. I can heal them magically without anybody knowing.”   
  
“The Ministry of Magic will know,” Snape pointed out.    
  
“But they can’t object to it if the muggles are none the wiser,” Lily insisted.   
  
He gave her one of his exasperated smiles. “You never think about consequences,” he said gently. “Say you do that – set up as one of those holistic idiots: eventually, word’s going to get around. People are going to notice that you have a one hundred per cent success rate. They’ll either start worshipping you as some kind of god, or they’ll lock you up in a laboratory, and prod you with scalpels, trying to find out how you work.”   
  
“Maybe I’ll be intentionally sloppy,” Lily murmured. “Maybe I’ll cure their Cystitis, but give them an ear-infection – that kind of thing.”   
  
Snape laughed. “You do that, and they’ll stop coming to you. People always focus on the bad things.”   
  
“I guess that’s a compliment, coming from you, so I won’t try to defend them,” Lily sais mischievously.     
  
“We can’t reveal ourselves to the muggles without either becoming their masters or their slaves. I know it’s hard to believe, but the wizarding community has actually put some _thought_ into this.”   
  
Lily sighed petulantly. “Just because it could end in disaster, that’s no reason to give up.”   
  
“It’s the only reason to give up,” said Snape.    
  
Lily settled into silence, watching the tentacles of the giant squid unfurling under the surface of the water. But Snape knew her well: he could tell that it was not the kind of silence you get from gloomy acceptance, but from plotting how to rebel. He worried about her sometimes. He’d better get rich and powerful soon, to stop her from being thrown in Azkaban. The Dementors would have a feast if they ever stumbled across Lily.   
  
Still, he loved her indignant innocence. It was beautiful, and in a way that went beyond glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes. It showed the beauty of her soul. Complacency was all you ever met with in the wizard world: nothing was important except Quidditch and chocolate frogs and showing off. It was no wonder Voldemort had crept up on them. It was wonderful to talk to somebody who wanted to question things, even if it wasn’t in quite the same way as he did. Sometimes, he felt like they were the only two sane people in the world.   
  
Half to distract her, and half to make her madder, he said.   
  
“You know wizards have a cure for cancer?”  
  
“No!” Lily exclaimed.   
  
“It’s true. It’s just sitting there, in a spell book on some dusty shelf. Wizards don’t get cancer, you see, so they’ve got no use for it. The inventor didn’t even get an Order of Merlin, Third Class. In fact,” Snape added dramatically, thrilling in the look of furious horror she was giving him, “he disappeared. Applied for a patent, and hasn’t been seen since.”   
  
Lily was hanging on his every word. It didn’t matter that her mouth was curled with disgust, and her cheeks flushed with anger. She was paying attention to him.   
  
“Some people reckon the Ministry did away with him, to avoid a scandal,” Snape went on, in a lower voice, so that she had to lean close to him. He smelled the ginger-bread scent of her hair, and felt excitement shudder through him, raising goose-bumps on every inch of his skin. “Because even a population as complacent as the witches and wizards of Britain would start muttering if they found out we had the cure to a disease that was killing millions of muggles a year, but we were keeping it to ourselves.”   
  
“So how did _you_ find out?”   
  
“Avery’s dad’s Head of the National Potion Research Institute,” said Snape. “He was the one who got handed the patent application. Showed it to a Ministry Official he was having lunch with, and the next thing you know, the inventor disappears.”   
  
“Avery’s dad married his own _cousin_ ,” Lily pointed out scornfully.   
  
“True, but that doesn’t mean he can’t spot a scandal when he sees one. He’s not as dim as Avery – marrying your own cousin isn’t as bad as being a _product_ of the marriage between cousins.”    
  
Lily smiled, in spite of herself. “I still say there’s no way the Ministry would have someone killed,” she muttered.   
  
“I agree,” Snape said, shrugging. “They haven’t got the guts. But they could throw him in Azkaban on some trumped-up charge. Especially now that everyone’s so hysterical over You-Know-Who.”   
  
Lily tilted her head and gave him a far-away look. “Sev…” she whispered. “We could find him.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“As a side-project.” She nudged him affectionately. “You know, something to think about during those ‘moronic lessons on Cheering Charms’?”   
  
“You’re joking, right?”   
  
Severus crossed his fingers under his robes. If she really wanted him to do something stupid and dangerous, there were a limited number of ways to get out of it; he couldn’t disappoint her: it went against every instinct in his body.   
  
“What’s his name, anyway, this inventor?” she asked, a little too casually.   
  
“He’s dangerous, Lil,” Snape said flatly.   
  
“I just want to know his _name_.”   
  
Severus sighed. “Something Murk,” he said. “That’s all I know.”   
  
They were silent for a while, Lily reaching into the water to tickle the squid’s tentacles. She had quite an affinity for animals, especially magical ones. He supposed they could sense a sympathetic attitude. Come to think of it, most of the students at the school could sense a sympathetic attitude – especially the male ones – they all agreed that compassionate girls were much easier to get into bed than normal ones.   
  
She was proving them wrong, though. Lily’s sympathy only went so far.   
  
“This world is so screwed-up,” she muttered.   
  
“The muggle world’s not perfect, either,” said Snape, who knew from bitter experience. “Neither world is ideal, but at least in the magical one we get to be ourselves.”   
  
“ _I_ don’t.”   
  
Snape gave her a crooked smile. “You?” he asked incredulously. “You’ll be yourself wherever you go. I pity the poor idiot who tries to stop you.”   
  
“I just want to feel like they _care_ about muggles!” she exclaimed.   
  
“Maybe they will, in another twenty years or so.”   
  
“It depends who’s in charge, doesn’t it?” Lily asked gloomily. “If Dumbledore stays in control, they might. But _him_ …” she trailed off.   
  
Severus knew he had to be cautious on this topic. She’d be angry with him if she knew his intention of joining Voldemort; but at the same time, he wanted to come to her rescue; he wanted to feel indispensible to her; he wanted her to fall into his arms and weep with gratitude, so he said. “I won’t let him get your family, you know. You can trust me.”   
  
Lily managed a weak little smile. “That’s what I’ve been telling Meg and Mary. But they don’t think I should.”   
  
Snape was happy that she hadn’t reacted scornfully or suspiciously, and happy too that she was sticking up for him around her moronic Gryffindor friends. But, still, he didn’t like the idea that they were abusing him to Lily behind his back.   
  
“Well, they’re idiots.”   
  
“Sev!”   
  
Severus relented. He hadn’t seen her for days; he didn’t want her to start sulking with him now.   
  
“It’s only because you’re hanging out with people who think Dark Magic is _funny_ ,” Lily muttered reproachfully.     
  
“And you’re hanging out with people who think Potter is funny. But I still like you.”   
  
Lily rolled her eyes. Really, to suppose that James Potter had the monopoly on charm, was to ignore Severus Snape at moments like these.   
  
“The point is, you’re not your friends,” he went on. “So I hang out with a couple of vicious idiots? It doesn’t change _me_. They could never do any real damage, anyway – they’re too thick.”   
  
“But _you_ could do real damage,” she replied.    
  
Snape was deeply flattered. He tried to suppress the smile, though, because she was watching him with a surly frown.   
  
“But I won’t. Not to you.”   
  
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better, is it?” she asked, sitting up and folding her arms in exasperation.   
  
Severus felt a pressing need to change the subject, so he said something that had been on his mind all through this conversation: something he never would have said if her beauty, and the fact that she stood up for him, and the fact that she believed he could be dangerous, hadn’t gone to his head.   
  
“You know what I like about you?” he said. “I could never have made you up.”   
  
Lily, caught off guard by this comment, laughed. “I’m not sure whether to be flattered or offended by that.”   
  
Severus suddenly regretted that he had said it. It was a difficult idea to explain, without straying into uncomfortable territory. “I just mean…” he muttered, picking up a handful of grass and twisting it, “I mean, I’ve got a pretty good imagination. I’ve had to – I didn’t have toys or TV or a top-of-the-range broomstick like that Potter creep. But I couldn’t have invented you. I don’t have the materials, not for you. Everyone else, I could have dreamt up at the age of four: vicious bullies, biased teachers, giggling idiots,” Severus felt more comfortable now that he was insulting people, and his voice became stronger. “I mean, spoiled little princesses like Narcissa Black, or sadistic maniacs like Bellatrix are not exactly difficult to predict. All you have to do is work out what they want, and you know what they’ll do. But you… you do the opposite, most of the time.”   
  
Lily nudged him playfully. “You mean I’m a masochistic maniac?” she asked.   
  
She was trying to make him feel less uncomfortable, and Severus felt both grateful and humiliated for it. He hated her being kind to him. It made him feel like a charity case.   
  
Still, he smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “A kind of Anti-Bellatrix.”   
  
“Now _that_ , I can take as a compliment,” Lily said cheerfully. “And maybe, when we collide, we’ll both be annihilated, like matter and anti-matter. I’d like to go in a heroic cause like that.”   
  
Severus didn’t know why, but he found this sentence chilling. Still, he had exposed himself to enough of her sympathetic understanding today: he didn't want to make things worse. So he went back to his contemplation of Hogwarts' lengthening shadow, and kept his worries to himself. He was used to it.


	5. The Last Night

In the library, darkness had turned the windows into black mirrors. It was one of those exhilarating nights where the atmosphere outside was at once forbidding and inviting. The darkness beyond the window was impenetrable; it seemed thicker than on any other night, and the wind howled plaintively through the unseen branches in the forbidden forest, adding the creaking of trees and whipping of leaves to the wild, but invisible, cacophony.

  
But everything inside the library was warm and quiet, though the studying students were thrillingly reminded of the cold by the creeping chill that oozed from between the window-panes.     
  
Severus and Lily were sitting at their favourite table by the window. This would be their last night together for a long time, although neither of them knew it. Tomorrow, their friendship would shudder to a halt down by the lake with the words 'filthy little mudblood'. And, when they found each other again, their relationship would bear little resemblance to the term 'friendship'.   
  
But tonight, they were studying quietly. The noise of the gale outside was generating an air of nervous excitement, and they kept stealing glances at each other over the top of their books, and smiling, though neither of them knew precisely what it was they were smiling about. They were together, indoors, and the night outside was horrible. That was enough.  
  
Neither of them had made any mention of the kiss in Greenhouse Three. In fact, nobody who knew Snape would have noticed any difference in his behaviour, except that he was grinning a lot for no apparent reason, and was suddenly behaving with perfect civility to Janus, who had sought him out at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall the day before:    
  
"I vas told your mother's name vas Eileen Prince."   
  
"Yeah?" Snape had replied cautiously.   
  
"She came to Durmstrang to play Gobstones in my father's time. He said she vas vonderful. Such poise and concentration!"   
  
Snape had tried to imagine his mother with poise and concentration. These days, she was so absorbed in her own misery that she forgot to brush her hair, or iron her clothes. Last time Snape had seen her she had put lipstick on her bottom lip but not the top one. Her magic, when she was permitted by her husband to attempt it (that is, when her husband was out, or asleep), was clumsy and feeble. Eileen Prince lived wrapped up in the worst moments of her life, and was only really haunting the present.   
  
"Oh," he'd said. "Great."  
  
"You vere still very unkind to Lily," Janus had muttered, but without much conviction, as though this was merely a ceremonial comment that he had to get out of the way before they could talk about Gobstones again.    
  
Snape gave a dismissive wave of his spoon. "Have you seen much of her lately?"   
  
"No. She is avoiding me, I think. She must like somevone else."    
  
Snape had shivered with delight, and listened to the talk about Gobstones without a trace of his usual impatience.   
  
Remembering this conversation with Janus, Snape glanced up from his book at Lily. The crashes and creaks of what was unmistakeably a tree being blown over in the forest made her shiver slightly and she looked up, too.  
  
"I hope Hagrid's alright in this weather," she said, glancing pointlessly out of the window.   
  
Snape looked back down at his book, and said, with the barest trace of a sneer, that it would take more than a gale to blow Hagrid over.   
  
Lily recognised that it was in deference to her feelings that he had kept his sneer to a minimum, and she smiled slightly. It was hard for him to be nice, but he was trying. Putting down her book for good, she leaned back in her chair and stretched her legs out.  
  
"I don't think my brain can absorb any more tonight," she said, yawning.    
  
Snape put his book down too. Lily had closed her eyes and was sitting back in her chair contentedly. Everything was dark beyond their pool of candlelight, as though somebody had set out to paint the scene on a black background, but given up half-way through. The stands behind her extended only a little way, before they dropped off into darkness. Lily's pale, radiant skin and darkly glowing hair seemed to be the only colour left in the world; they were both so intense that they reminded Snape of stained glass, with the sun streaming through it.  
  
As he watched her, all the sharp, resentful lines on his face softened; his habitual frown disappeared; he looked suddenly very young and eager; his eyes seemed to deepen – they no longer resembled hard black stones but bottomless pits. He was strangely transfigured. Nothing about his appearance had changed, but everything was different. Lily did not notice this, however; he dropped his gaze to his book as soon as she opened her eyes, and then his face became sharp, opaque and resentful once more.    
  
"I've been thinking," Lily began in a low voice, because Madam Pince was looking murderous, "of asking Margot Holloway to Magical Ethics this week. Maybe I can reason her out of her political apathy."   
  
"You just can't resist a lost cause, can you?" Snape murmured.   
  
"One of the reasons I'm friends with you," she replied cheerfully, helping herself to one of the chocolate frogs that were piled beside his books.    
  
Snape treated her to one of his strange, exasperated smiles. These expressions were a kind of compromise whenever happiness was trying to intrude upon his thoughts, but he couldn't quite give way to it. He was too frightened of being humiliated to let go of his calm, sneering, indifferent manner, even around Lily, but neither could he ignore the pleasure he felt in her presence, so this odd little half-grimace, half-smile was the result.   
  
Once or twice, pure love had overcome his fear of rejection, even his resentment, and he had drawn her into his arms, his contentment too perfect for words. On such occasions, he pitied the Marauders, or even forgot who they were, and let his beautiful Lily fill his whole world. He would be on the verge of telling her how he felt about her, but always some vague fear would intrude – fear of her laughter or, worse, her pity, fear that they couldn't be friends anymore – and instead he would press his face into her red hair, willing her to read his mind, because he couldn't tell her what was in it.   
  
Lily understood more of his feelings than he generally gave her credit for. She knew that he wanted to be close to her but was too frightened of being rejected or betrayed; she knew that he admired her, and thought her clever; they had developed a way of expressing affection through teasing and playful arguments that managed to circumvent all his fears about being close to people; but she couldn't guess that he loved her. He confused her: sometimes he was so distant with her that he seemed positively disdainful. If she tried to sympathise with him about the way the Marauders treated him, he would snap at her, or tell her it was none of her business. The only exception he made to this was when she offered to insult James Potter, and Lily didn't really feel that Snape's resentful obsession with James Potter should be encouraged.    
  
Besides which, five years of taunting and prejudice had diminished her self-esteem more than anyone would have guessed from her confident manner. She couldn't imagine anybody loving her, least of all Severus, who was so wretched and proud and aggressive and solitary.   
  
Despite her better judgement, however, she liked him; she cherished the teasing insults he lavished upon her, she found the arguments exciting (except when he veered into terrain so morally repugnant to her that she felt slightly sick), she allowed herself to hope that he could learn to be a better person, and even flattered herself that the hope was selfless, just a generous expression of confidence in an old friend. Occasionally, she would tell herself not to lose her head; she couldn't trust him, after all; he was too angry, too cruel. But while these worrying aspects of his personality were only directed towards others, she always found some way to overlook them.   
  
She was later to become very angry with herself for that.   
  
Lily looked at her chocolate frog card and gave an involuntary exclamation of delight that caused Madam Pince to swoop down on them with a deranged fervour in her eyes.   
  
"Quiet!" she hissed, spit flying onto their table.   
  
Lily gave an apologetic little smile, which entirely failed to charm the librarian, and lowered her eyes demurely to her book, trying to look as sorry as possible. This only lasted a few seconds, however, because the moment Madam Pince had stalked away, breathing very hard through her nostrils, Lily turned to Severus and whispered.   
  
"I've got Circe! She's the only one I was missing!"  
  
Snape raised his eyebrows. "And is that any reason to behave like a squealing Hufflepuff?"  
  
She ignored him, too consumed with elation to join in the friendly exchange of insults.   
  
Snape continued to look at her while she greedily read over Circe's various achievements – she was, apparently, a pioneer in the fields of Potions and Transfiguration. When Lily looked back up at him, there was a fathomless expression in his black eyes. She would have called it tenderness, except that it was a bit too fierce. Whatever it was, it made her blush.   
  
"The first magical feminist," Lily said proudly, after a while. "A very clever witch who turned men into beasts." She sighed theatrically and then muttered: "If only it was legal to follow her example!"   
  
"Of course, you realise that, as it was my chocolate frog, the card actually belongs to me?"   
  
Snape couldn't suppress a smile at the appalled, wide-eyed look she now directed at him.    
  
"You wouldn't…" she began, but then checked herself. Lily was always quick to understand how other people felt, though hopelessly ignorant of her own feelings.    
  
It wasn't precisely that he didn't want to be kind to her – he was always helping her with spells and potions, and warning her about attacks that his Slytherin friends were planning – it was just that it had to be exasperated kindness, or condescending kindness; otherwise, it made him vulnerable. Lily realised that she could get her chocolate frog card and make him happy at the same time, and all she had to do was compromise her principles a little.   
  
The realisation that she was always compromising her principles for Severus Snape pressed on her slightly, but she brushed it away, impatient to make him smile.   
  
"I'll tell you what I'll do," she said, in a shrewd, business-like voice. "You give me this, and I will assist you in any non-fatal tricks you might be planning to play on James Potter."   
  
She was not disappointed. Snape grinned at her. The slight uneasiness she had felt didn't leave her, however. Although she hated Potter and didn't see anything wrong with defending her friends from his casual cruelty (besides which, she fully considered him too arrogant to be capable of suffering, in any meaningful way), she didn't like to encourage Snape's enmity, or get involved in it herself.   
  
"I'll have to approve them first," she added quickly.   
  
Snape shook his head, still grinning at her. "You wouldn't approve anything. I know you. You'll end up feeling sorry for him."   
  
Lily looked highly affronted. "If there's anyone in the world I couldn't feel sorry for, it's him! After what he did to you in Charms last week - ."   
  
Snape's smile faded instantly. A dull flush suffused his sallow cheeks and he said, a little aggressively, "I don't need your pity."  
  
"I'll remember that," she said, trying to smile. Not for the first time, she wondered whether she was just trying to convince herself that he was her friend. She blushed, miserably confused, and muttered something about getting an early night before the exam tomorrow.    
  
Snape didn't say anything. He watched her until she was swallowed up by the darkness outside the reach of the candlelight, and then shuddered wretchedly. It was only when the sound of her footsteps had died away that he realised she had left the chocolate frog card behind her. For a few moments, he considered going after her, apologising, forcing her to take the card, but then his thoughts strayed to the Charms lesson she had alluded to and, lost in bitter recollections, he let her go. He would find her tomorrow, and make everything all right.


	6. Vengeance

And then it happened. He didn't remember much about it, to begin with. The whole incident was just a swirling, white-hot patch of pain that he couldn't bring himself to investigate further, in case, by some hellish miracle, it started to hurt even more.   
  
But it wasn't in the nature of a Slytherin to hide away from the facts for long.   
  
The taste of soap lingered in his mouth for the rest of the summer, and he wondered – when he was rational enough to wonder – whether this was purely psychological, or whether Potter put something in his jinxes to ensure their longevity. It would be just like the bastard.   
  
He spent the holidays wandering around the streets and broken-down factories that bordered Spinner's End. He was angry with everyone except Lily – and it was hard to rationalize why he wasn't angry with Lily, but rationality, at that moment, was not his strongest desire. Vengeance was his strongest desire.   
  
But he was trapped in a muggle hovel with paper-thin walls – and, even if the walls hadn't been paper-thin, his parents' arguments would have been perfectly audible. They would have been audible from the _moon_. So he took his lust for vengeance onto the streets, and was vaguely surprised when his furious footsteps failed to melt the tarmac on the pavements.   
  
Mostly, he spent his time in an abandoned warehouse a little way back from the river, where it was cool and shady in the simmering summer heat, thumbing through the beloved pages of _Moste Potente Potions_ and imagining which poisons he would feed to James Potter and Sirius Black if he had the chance.   
  
He had to stay away from his own house because his parents were arguing worse than ever – his presence seemed to trigger it – and his father had been quick to notice the absence of Lily. He'd asked Severus in the first week of the holidays why his 'little red-head friend' didn't call round anymore.   
  
"I liked her," he'd muttered darkly. "She was good for keeping you out from under our feet."  
  
Well, if that was what they wanted, Snape was only too happy to oblige.   
  
In the third week, he gave in and walked up to the park that stood opposite Lily's house. It was deserted, because the weather was too hot even for the sun-starved English. He sat on one of the swings and balanced _Moste Potente Potions_ on his lap, looking at a poison that turned the victim inside-out, and fervently imagining the spectacle that would ensue in the Great Hall if he slipped this into James Potter's pumpkin juice.  
  
After about half an hour, the door of her house opened, and after ten apprehensive seconds in which he tried to arrange his face into a casual expression, he looked up.    
  
Snape gave a deep, shuddering sigh. Petunia Evans was making her way towards him from the house. She made a great show of doing this reluctantly, in case anybody who saw them happened to think they were friends.    
  
"What are you doing here?"   
  
"What does it look like?" said Snape coldly, not looking up from his book.  
  
"She doesn't want you here."   
  
There was a high-pitched, nasal quality to Petunia Evans' voice that grated on Snape's nerves.   
  
"This is a public park," he said matter-of-factly. "I'm allowed to sit here."    
  
Petunia leaned against the side of the swing. Horrible as she was, she was not quick-witted. It took her a while to think up her taunts. They were usually, however, right on target, and today was no exception.   
  
"You really upset her, you know. She cried when she told me what you did. In front of the whole _school_. I'm glad you don't have any friends now."   
  
Snape stared straight ahead. There was a pounding in his ears. Think of Hogwarts, he thought. Think what would happen if you got expelled and ended up having to live in this world, with people like _her_.   
  
"Now she's got a new freak friend," Petunia went on, with casual contempt.  
  
Snape looked up, and saw her mouth twist cruelly. She knew she was on to something here.  
  
"She's out with him today. He's still a weirdo, but at least he's got proper clothes," her eyes lingered on Snape's grey hooded jumper, several sizes too big, and his tattered jeans, at least two inches too short. Then, slowly, as though relishing every word, she said: "It's that Potter you're always going on about."   
  
This, he hadn't been expecting. No restraining thoughts of Hogwarts occurred to him in the split second it took him to draw out his wand and point it at her.  
  
"You're a liar," he shouted. He was on his feet, and trembling with rage. "You're a _liar_!"   
  
Petunia backed against a tree. Her face was white. "You're not allowed to do magic outside of school!" she protested.   
  
"We are for liars!" Snape improvised wildly. "We're allowed to turn liars into slugs. In fact, we're _supposed_ to turn liars into slugs. I'd get detention if I _didn't_ turn you into a slug!"   
  
"All right, _all right_!" she wailed. "He's called Roger Davies or something, not James Potter!" Recovering herself a little, as Snape lowered his wand, she added:  "He's still better than you. _He_ washes his hair…"   
  
And with a glance to left and right, making sure that anybody who saw her noticed her contemptuous expression, she stormed back into the house.  
  
Snape's vision blurred with anger. His insides gave a furious lurch, as though he had taken the potion that turned the drinker inside out. For a moment he stood, gripping the chain of the swing hard, forgetting where he was, and even who; forgetting everything except his hatred.    
  
But Snape's tragedy was that, even in moments of extreme emotion, he still retained a glimmer of rationality. There was an icy core at the centre of his brain, that all the combined heat of his deep-seated love and obsessive hatred couldn't melt. There, it was always winter, but never Christmas. Exactly the same caution that prevented him from telling Lily how he felt about her, or punching the Slytherins who insulted her, or ever truly enjoying himself (except when he was making other people suffer), kept him from cursing Petunia Evans.    
  
Slowly, he mastered himself, breathing deeply through his nose. He prised his hand off the swing's chain, noting dispassionately that its pattern was deeply imprinted in his palm.   
  
He knew enough of Lily's frankness to believe that she was not at home; if she had been, she would have come out to tell him to leave by now.   
  
He also knew that Roger Davies had a crush on Lily. He was a Ravenclaw prefect in their year, and the only pure-blood wizard in Lily's Magical Ethics Club. Most people assumed he had simply joined up in order to impress Lily, and it was certainly true that she hadn't stopped talking about his impassioned speech on Muggle Rights for weeks after he'd made it. But he had a reputation for being highly-principled in any case. It was widely known that he had persuaded his family to pay their House Elf wages. Apparently, the Galleons paid to the House Elf had by now formed a teetering pile in the kitchen, which the Elf shuddered to look at. Davies would occasionally glare reproachfully at his mother whenever she tried to dust this money off and use it for shopping.        
  
This was just the kind of pointless morality that Lily admired, so it was plausible (and the thought sent a cold shudder through him, despite the summer heat) that she would go out with him.   
  
He moved off the swing and sat with his back to a tree that screened him from Lily's house (because Petunia was squinting spitefully at him from the kitchen window). He would just wait for her to come home, that was all, and force her to believe he was sorry.      
  
  
Lily had not spoken to Severus for three weeks now and, to celebrate this sad anniversary, she buried her ledger, in which they had written their riddles and conversations, at the bottom of her school trunk, underneath a horrible flowery pink blouse that Petunia had given her last Christmas. (Petunia's resentment had no other outlet than the buying of horrible clothes for her sister, which Lily was always too kind to refuse to wear. Snape had teased her mercilessly when she'd worn the blouse, though he had actually found her quite attractive in it).  
  
She hadn't spoken to anyone about her lost friend. Such a large portion of her life, her secrets, her affection, had been tied up in her friendship with Severus, that nobody could really understand her once it was gone.    
  
She felt like a jigsaw puzzle with a crucial piece missing, so that nobody could tell what the picture was. How could she tell Meg Valance, or even Mary Macdonald, about her worries? How could she share puzzles and riddles with them? How could she crystallize her own sense of right by arguing with them? They had exactly the same ideas of right as she did.    
  
Now she had to forget the portion of herself that she had poured into the friendship with Severus. There was no recovering it; it had been mangled by abused trust and wilful stupidity. If she took it back, it would poison her: make her bitter and cruel, like he was. Forgetting was the only option, as far as she could see. For a few minutes, she felt sick with longing for her old self, and it glimmered before her eyes - her own dear, trusting soul. She was sad and bitterly angry at the same time.  
  
But she pushed it aside. It was time to put away childish things.  
  
That was why she was meeting Roger Davies. It was the one thing everyone agreed on about Roger Davies; he was a grown-up. He didn't have dark ambitions or Death-Eater friends. He had responsibilities and a social conscience. He was all the bare ingredients of an ideal man, but something must have happened in the assembly process, because what all these bare ingredients amounted to was an earnest, humourless Quidditch captain, who was keen on campaigning and questionnaires.   
  
He made her feel half-dead. But, since her mind was a rage of pain and misgivings whenever she permitted herself to feel alive, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.   
  
She was going to meet him in the little wooded scrub-land by the canal. He knew Manchester, that was another plus-point about him. He worked in a muggle soup-kitchen there every other weekend.   
  
She stepped under the trees, and felt her shoulders sag with relief. It was very dark in here, even at the edge of the wood; a nest of tangled roots and peeling bark that shut out the sound of the wind and smelled of damp earth. She felt so exposed outside; it would be wonderful to be invisible and enclosed.     
It was a Sunday - and it made her think of church - the silence being stirred by plaintive organ music, like dust motes in a breeze, the sun coming out suddenly from behind a cloud, and throwing stained-glass glimmers into the assembled congregation. There had been something so sad about the whole thing - or was it just the fact that nostalgia was intrinsically sad?  
  
No, it _was_ sad. A place of pleading and remembering. But there had been hope too. Not the kind of electric hope that courses through the crowd at a football match, but a serene hope linked inexplicably in Lily's mind to the sun coming out suddenly and illuminating the stained glass windows. A wonderful sense of certainty and security prevailed, and whether or not it was groundless didn't seem to matter. That had been Lily's experience of church. The morals and the stories she could not now remember, but she remembered the atmosphere - sad and hopeful at the same time.  
  
And she longed to feel again the serene conviction, the untroubled certainty of those mornings. You were doing what was right just by turning up; you were distinguishing yourself by doing what you were told. You didn't have to think for yourself, or decide whether or not you could trust people.   
  
The breeze blew at her back, raising goose-bumps along every inch of her skin – the first goose-bumps she had felt since she'd broken up with Severus. Roger Davies had Apparated behind her, at a respectful distance, and was now respectfully clearing his throat. He didn't try to sneak up behind her, startle her, and then accuse her of behaving like a 'squealing Hufflepuff' when she screamed.   
  
And that was a good thing, of course. It was _progress_. She just wished progress didn't have to hurt so much.   
  
  
The Revelio Potion allowed people's true characters to show momentarily on their faces. It had been invented, the book informed him, by a mad recluse in the twelfth century, who was convinced that the inhabitants of the nearby village, who sometimes came to offer him food, were demons. He invented the Potion to restore them to their true state and, after several disastrous attempts, in which the potion simply killed the poor people whom he had persuaded to drink it, the monk found himself looking at a horrifying assortment of creatures. The villagers' faces became animalistic, in strange and differing ways. Some people acquired long fangs, others furry muzzles, hooves, scales or snouts. They took on the appearance of the animals that symbolised their vices. Unfortunately, the villager with fangs tore his throat out.      
  
Snape looked up from the page. The suburban dusk was quiet. Birds twittered around him. Every now and then, a car would rumble past, wending its way home.   
  
At half past nine, he stopped reading his book (partly because there was not enough light, and partly because he couldn't concentrate for all the horrible images that started to occur to him, of what Lily might be doing with Roger Davies). But he didn't have to wait long. It was a quarter to ten when she came around the corner, looking like a ghost in the pale twilight.      
  
Snape got up, but remained hidden behind the tree. She wasn't alone. Davies was walking with her. From his hiding place, Snape could hear the monotone rumble of his voice, though he couldn't distinguish any words except 'unethical' and 'reprehensible'.   
  
"I know," Lily was saying mechanically. "I know."   
There was an odd, jerky quality to her movements, as though somebody else was pulling her sinews and twitching her nerves, animating her from within like an ill-fitting glove-puppet.   
  
They came to a halt outside the front door, but Lily – out of automated nerves – kept on talking about magical ethics.   
  
"I mean, the improvements that wizards could make to the quality of life in the muggle world are - ,"  
  
Very suddenly, as though he had to do it before he lost his nerve, Davies kissed her.   
  
Snape gave a low moan. For a few seconds, he clung wretchedly to the hope that she would slap Davies, but she didn't. She suffered the kiss. She didn't return it, or smile, or squeeze his hand – she just accepted it with a kind of solemn, trembling blankness that was somehow worse than any passion would have been.   
The errant curtain of hair fell across her eyes again, and she made no move to push it back. For Severus, it seemed like the final curtain on everything. That's it, it said. The show's over. You can hang on to your ticket stub – for all the good it'll do you – but please clear the theatre, because we have to get ready for the next show – starring Roger Davies as 'The Second Quidditch-playing Moron to Ruin your Life'.   
  
"Well, I'd better go in," she said, with the same solemnity. "Goodnight, Roger."  
  
With the last lingering remnants of his self-control, Snape watched the door close behind her, watched Davies (who was grinning as though he'd been Confunded) disappear down the street. Then, for a while, he knew no more. For maybe half an hour, the ice cube of rationality at the centre of his brain dissolved, along with the rest of his world.         
  
When his fury had subsided, he found himself on his knees on the dirty floor of the warehouse he'd been sheltering in for most of the summer, with a plan fully formed in his mind. Every inch of him was trembling, his knuckles were bleeding, but he knew exactly what he had to do, and this calmed him down. Slowly, he gathered up the torn pages of _Moste Potente Potions_ , being careful to collect them all. The page bearing Lily's birthday greetings, and her love, had been torn into pieces, and it took him a long time in the gathering gloom to locate every piece, but eventually, he was satisfied. He would have to repair it the muggle way, since he wasn't allowed to use magic in the holidays. The blood from his knuckles had stained his grey sweatshirt, but he doubted his parents would notice. They were so astonishingly preoccupied with hating each other, he sometimes wondered that they ever found time to eat and sleep.   
  
He walked through the streets, contemplating his plan. The rusty glare of the streetlamps made his vision harsh and grainy, but his head was amazingly clear. He stopped outside the doorway to the house in Spinner's End, listening to the shouts proceeding from within. Then, taking a deep breath, as though about to plunge into icy water, he opened the front door.   
  
Three hours later, he was lying on his front on his bedroom floor, with _Moste Potente Potions_ propped up in front of him. He had used spellotape to fix the pages back in place. The page with Lily's message on it was now reconstituted; it had been like completing a jigsaw puzzle, and it had soothed him. Despite the cuts and bruises, he had found that his hands were remarkably steady as he worked. It was good to finally have something to do. And now he had something to think about too: a purely intellectual something that could distract him whenever he was tempted to think about Lily kissing Roger Davies, or the scene by the lake: revenge.   
  
He flicked back a few pages to the title-page where Lily had written: 'Dear Sev, Happy Birthday! Lots of love, L.' and, his eyes slightly unfocused with hatred, thought about what he was going to do.   
  
The Department of Magical Games and Sports was trying to revive the Triwizard Tournament. Janus had been sent over by Durmstrang as a sort of scout, to investigate the possibility of holding it at Hogwarts, since neither of the other schools were prepared to be absolutely open about their locations, especially in the climate of fear that Voldemort's rise to power was generating. Severus knew that the Heads of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons would be coming to watch the opening Quidditch game of the term in October.    
  
James Potter would want to do something very spectacular. And if the idea to do something daring and reckless hadn't already entered his thick head, it could be planted there. He was utterly predictable.   
  
And Severus knew just what kind of stunt James Potter could be tempted with. The best of it was that he, Severus, wouldn't have to get his hands dirty at all. He could just sit back and watch Potter humiliate himself.   
  
When the stunt failed and resulted, if not in deaths, then at least in severe injuries, then Hogwarts, Gryffindor and, in particular, James Potter, would be disgraced. The Heads of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons would boycott the Triwizard Tournament, and the idea would have to be abandoned. (Snape considered this prospect with some regret, because he had been thinking of trying out for school champion himself, as - he knew - had Lily, but the likelihood was that it would go to Sirius Black or James Potter - Dumbledore was so biased towards them).   
  
  
Ulysses Santacruz had been a very famous Argentinian Seeker. He had, however, been bored, and, as Snape's father was so fond of saying 'the devil makes work for idle hands'.   
  
Not that Ulysses' hands would have been considered idle by anyone else's standards; it was just that he was so good at catching Snitches, even on his primitive, nineteenth-century broomstick, that they genuinely appeared to zoom straight into his waiting arms. Ulysses hardly even had to stretch. His team-mates, too, though phenomenally successful, were getting fat and cynical because they never got the opportunity to play; as soon as they mounted their brooms, Ulysses had caught the Snitch and the game was over. Some of them decided that it wasn't even worth turning up. It was not unusual to find Ulysses marching out to meet the opposing team alone, his broomstick slung jauntily over his shoulder, his little black eyes twinkling like the night sky. As he shook hands with the Captain of the opposing team, a pitying smile could be seen to play around the corners of his mouth. This generally unnerved his opponents so much that they were still on the ground, staring in bewilderment at each other, by the time Ulysses had zoomed down again, the Snitch cradled tenderly in his hands.     
  
Ability had been a curse for Ulysses Santacruz. Therefore, he decided that he would make a Snitch of his own. One that would test him to his very limits, and Ulysses Santacruz's limits were unlimited.   
  
The Dark Snitch was many years in the making. Ulysses could be seen making notes for its design whilst on his broomstick, half-heartedly stretching out his arm for the Snitch. It was simply not enough to enchant the Dark Snitch to be exceptionally fast. As fast as they were, Ulysses always seemed to know where they were going. He therefore began plans for a Snitch that was cunning, a Snitch that could defend itself, a Snitch that would be a worthy adversary. And, in case that was not enough, (because Ulysses had noticed that Snitches tended to give up, and become very docile, as soon as they thought they were about to be caught) he enchanted the Snitch to open when he was close to it, and release a paralysing potion that would immobilize him, thereby enabling the Snitch to zoom away again.   
  
After five years of careful planning and testing, during which Ulysses occasionally turned up to work with magical burns or temporarily paralysed limbs (but was nevertheless still able to catch the Snitch), he finished the Dark Snitch in time for the Quidditch World Cup Final of 1849: England vs. Argentina. He substituted his new invention for the regular Snitch that had been intended for that game.   
  
Records of precisely what ensued were scarce owing to the fact that the players could never be induced to speak of it, even under Veritaserum, and the spectators were somehow transported to Paris, with no memory of who they were, and no idea why they were speaking Spanish, as opposed to French. When their memories were painstakingly reconstructed by Ministry of Magic employees, it became clear that the Dark Snitch had consumed the referee in some sort of green fire and somehow knocked every player other than Ulysses out of the air.   
  
Ulysses himself had vanished. He was last seen, many decades later, by a muggle goatherd on a mountaintop in Peru. According to the goatherd, (whose memory was subsequently modified) Ulysses had a long white beard and was zooming after 'some kind of flying black marble' on a broomstick.         
  
As the Snitch was never caught, that particular Quidditch match was technically still going on, though the last player (aside from Ulysses) to have played in it died in 1964.     
  
Snape knew all this because, painful as it had recently become, he was very fond of Quidditch, rather as Lily was fond of Andromeda Black - they were both unable to meet the standards of their obsession, their obsession was exceedingly cruel to them, but they were awed by it nevertheless.  
  
He also knew, however - as only a wizard interested in the Dark Arts would - that Ulysses Santacruz had drunk unicorn blood in his feeble old age, in order to survive longer, to catch his precious snitch. Snape had read about this in _Agrippa's Almanacke_ , under the chapter entitled 'Absolute Last-resorts'. In the feeble half-life that had ensued for Ulysses, he pursued the Snitch to the mountains and glens of Scotland, and then - because his supply of Unicorn's blood had run out - he travelled to the Forbidden Forest in the Hogwarts grounds, seeking a fresh kill before he resumed his search.   
  
Severus knew the rest because he had so often sat detention in Dumbledore's office and been left alone there while the Headmaster went to fetch them cocoa. Snape had found the portraits of the previous Headmasters and mistresses of Hogwarts to be very informative, when they weren't cursing and muttering about his obscure blood-line.  
  
Phineas Nigellus Black had told him the story of how the Centaurs in the forest battled Ulysses Santacruz. Even in his aged and feeble state, Ulysses had snatched the arrows out of the air with consummate skill. Finally, however, there were just too many of them. When his body hit the floor, he was clutching twenty arrows in each hand, but his body was stuck with hundreds more, like a pincushion. The Dark Snitch, settling mournfully on the body of its defeated master, was shut up by them in a box made of dragon-hide (which is impervious to fire), and presented to the Headmaster of Hogwarts, during a brief period of highly co-operative civility between centaurs and humans, for safe-keeping.   
  
Unfortunately, they had presented it to the wrong Headmaster. Phineas Nigellus Black hated Quidditch, granted, but he was fascinated by powerful objects, and under the distinct impression that his family should possess all of them.   
It was hidden in the Black family vault – a cellar underneath the Hogwarts dungeons – to which at least two easily-blackmailable people had the key: Narcissa and Bellatrix Black. Severus made a mental note to start with Narcissa. She was a lot easier on the ears than her cackling sister.   
  
A simpler revenge would do for Black, Lupin and Pettigrew, thought Snape; something from his book of Potions, perhaps. As he flicked through its pages, an expression remarkably like tenderness settled over his pale face. He thought of Lily and her immoderate affection for books; he remembered her lovingly running her fingers down the spine of her favourite library books, but he had to stop, and turn his thoughts back to his revenge, because it occurred to him that even now she could be running her fingers lovingly down the spine of Roger Davies.


	7. Meg and Guillotine

Lily spent a week of the summer holidays at Meg Valance's manor house, riding Hippogriffs, feeding the herd of Thestrals on large, dripping, greying chunks of meat (a terrifying experience, since she couldn't see the creatures that were snatching the meat out of her hands), being stared at by haughty old Valances in the portrait gallery, and being very apologetic to the butler whenever he fetched her something.

They didn't have a House Elf, because of a long-standing family fear of 'inferior magical creatures'. But, apparently – and to Lily's relief – muggles were not included in this category, because they tolerated Silversmith, the muggle butler, with a kind of upper-class indifference that almost amounted to politeness.

He was a difficult man to be polite to, in any case. He never spoke, if it could possibly be avoided, and he looked bulky and out-of-place, standing in the corner of the room with his shaved head, too-tight robes and constant smile. There was something slightly... indecent... about that smile, especially when his pale, milky-blue eyes were turned on Lily. Fortunately, Meg's family seemed to be immune to social awkwardness, and were therefore serenely unaffected by his presence.

Meg herself was green-eyed, square-jawed and sporty. She had dark blonde hair, always pulled back into a serviceable ponytail, and possessed boundless energy and a very loud voice. She seemed to bounce everywhere, as though she had got on the wrong end of a Springing Charm when she was younger.

She was the only child of a very old wizarding family. As her father (after marrying seven times and even experimenting with dangerous Fertility Charms) had abandoned hope of producing a male heir, he devoted his time to instilling the manly virtues of chivalry and courage in his daughter. He could bear the loss of the name, but not the character, of his family. The Valances had been great warriors, distinguished Generals in the quashing of several goblin rebellions (as such, it had become a proverbial expression amongst the goblins that, while you could never trust a wizard, you deserved to have your tongue nailed to a dragon's back-side if you trusted a Valance).

The Valances had been in Gryffindor from time immemorial, (there were even rumours that Meg's great-uncle Haricot had had his daughter killed because the Sorting Hat had placed her in Ravenclaw). In fact, if Meg Valance had been the sort of girl to worry, she would have been quite anxious as she approached the stool with the Sorting Hat on it in her first year. Fortunately, she was not, and therefore bounded up to it, as she bounded up to everything in life (she never, ever bounded away).

She was merry, confident and utterly devoid of sentimentality. She had a tendency to talk over people, not because she wasn't interested in what they were saying, but because she had been raised to command, and not to listen. Her father had told her that people would try to tell her what to do from time to time, but that their advice was not to be heeded because they were not Valances.

"What if they are?" she had responded.

"They won't be. You and I are the only ones left. And once I have taught you to listen to the promptings of your noble blood, you may disregard any command I give you which conflicts with it."

Meg, being quick on the uptake and not at all afraid to speak her mind, had spotted the flaw in this argument.

"What if my noble blood is telling me that I've learned to listen to it before you've decided I have?"

Maximus Valance's noble blood had obviously prompted him to ignore this, and he had proceeded to tell her that her great, great grandfather had ridden into battle on a Hippogriff, therefore she would be learning to ride one. She had been six at the time. She still had the scars.

The advantageous thing about her upbringing was that she had not been taught to regard muggles or muggle-borns as inferior creatures, because her father had been careful to point out that every creature was equally inferior to a Valance.

 

On the third day of Lily's holiday at the Valance House, Meg dragged her down to a vaulted cellar with the mysterious declaration: "There's something you have to see, if you're ever going to understand the Valances."

Meg led her past wine-racks, wine-presses and barrels of ancient brandy, explaining that some relative or another had died at sea and been pickled in one of the barrels, but they had never found out which one.

"Dad says he'll have dissolved by now," Meg explained. "So they're probably safe to drink. In fact, dad's been threatening to make me drink them for years, 'cause he reckons I'll absorb Captain Valance's battle spirit if I drink his corpse."

Lily made a face, and hoped she wasn't revealing her cultural ignorance of the wizard world. "I think you should refuse to do that."

"Don't worry, he only talks about it if I get a mark below an 'O' in Defence Against the Dark Arts, and - ," she grinned, "needless to say, that doesn't happen very much."

They wandered on in silence for a while, until Meg piped up with: "D'you think Sirius is handsome?"

You had to get used to abrupt subject-changes, when you were talking to Meg Valance. 

Lily took her time thinking over the response. She had to be careful here, because she was talking to Sirius Black's on-again, off-again girlfriend. And, technically, he was handsome, it was just hard to find somebody handsome when they were laughing at dejected outsiders and hexing first-years...

"Yeah, I guess so." She shrugged. "Everyone says he's handsome."

Meg seemed to come to herself. She grinned with all her old exuberance and said. "Yeah, he's a charmer alright. But that's not enough for you, is it? You need someone more… cerebral."

Lily laughed at the word. "Exactly. Couldn't have put it better myself. Cerebral."

"Mary says you don't confide in people very much," Meg went on, looking at her, as though for the first time.

Lily smiled playfully. "What is it you and Mary would like to hear? That I'm having an affair with a teacher? That I'm a member of a militant Muggle Supremacy group, working to bring down the Magical world from within?"

Meg laughed. "She also said you'd start making jokes if I tried to find out about you."

Lily looked disconcerted at this, but recovered almost immediately. "I just meant that I don't have anything to confide," she replied, with a shrug.

When Meg raised her eyebrows, Lily threw up her hands, torn between exasperation and amusement. "All right. What do you want to know?" she asked. Her smile had gone, but there was still a playful glimmer in her eyes.

Meg shrugged. "For starters, do you really like Roger Davies?" she asked bluntly. "Is he cerebral enough for you?" 

Lily didn't know why, but this question was very unwelcome. She thought for a minute, before replying. "Of course I like him. He's a good person. He's got a social conscience. I admire him."

Meg looked pained. "'Good person'… 'social conscience'… 'admire'! Lily, that's awful!"

Lily blushed. "What's so awful about it?" she asked angrily.

"You can't go out with someone just because you endorse their politics!"

Lily felt definitely annoyed now. "It's not just because I… he's gentle and… he's not angry or cruel or interested in Dark Magic - ," she stopped, horrified with herself. Why had she said that? Why was it important that he wasn't interested in Dark Magic? Surely – surely she wasn't going out with Roger Davies just because he was the exact opposite of Severus Snape? 

Meg saw that she was painfully confused and replied, a little more gently, "come on, Lily. We're in the same boat, you and me. Nobody's good enough for us. All the boys we know are idiots. But we don't want to be alone. Everyone you go out with is going to be beneath you in one way or another, because, as I say, boys are thoughtless, insensitive idiots - ,"

In spite of herself, Lily gave a little laugh. It was quite funny to hear Meg Valance criticising people for being thoughtless and insensitive.

"But you just have to make sure that the thoughtless, insensitive idiot you end up with is one that you care about," Meg added, "because stupid as they are, it's unkind to them to lead them on." 

Lily managed a shadow of her previous smile. "I'm surprised you think he's beneath me. I'm not a Valance. I'm about as far from a Valance as it's possible to be."

Meg slapped her on the back heartily. "You're Valance-like in character, my little muggle-born! Only you're a bit too polite – which is fine, in general, it's just, you know, when you're so polite that you start going out with someone you don't fancy, it's probably time to call it a day."

 

It transpired that the thing she had to see in order to properly understand the Valances was an enormous, barricaded set of doors. One half was hanging off its hinges. The other half had deep welts in the woodwork, as though it had been struck repeatedly with a battering ram.

"What's this?" Lily asked, running a finger over the splintered, tortured wood.

"This," said Meg, "is the library. I thought you'd like that bit," she added, seeing Lily's eyes light up. "But you might not like the rest. Come on in. Don't touch the left door."

Lily edged past the half-door which was hanging off its hinges, and found herself standing in the library of her dreams, although it seemed to have been the venue for a nightmare. On the one hand, it was a surprisingly dry and comfortable vaulted cellar, filled with ornately carved archways. The walls were set with bookshelves that extended far up into the gloomy shadows of the ceiling. On the other hand, Lily was disturbed to find that pictograms and symbols had been chalked haphazardly all over the floor; there was even the outline of a hand that had been chalked around. Lily bent down in the gloom to look at it; it had a finger missing.

There were also books lying, half-open, on the floor, with pages torn out of them. To Lily, this was like seeing a floor littered with desecrated corpses.

"What happened here?" she said.

Meg elaborated, with a certain amount of enthusiasm. Her formidable great aunt Guillotine Valance had once barricaded herself in here for six months, she said, while hoping to evade Ministry Law Enforcement Officers, who had come to arrest her for cannibalism. The siege of the Valance library was a horror story still ritualistically told to new recruits at the Department for Magical Law Enforcement.

"Cannibalism?" Lily demanded. "Who did she eat? She wasn't really guilty, was she?"

"Well, put it this way," Meg said airily, "she survived for six months down here, and they never found her children."

Lily wondered how many children you would have to eat in order to stay alive for six months, but decided not to enquire. Another question, though potentially as unwholesome as the first, occurred to her.

"Why did they call her Guillotine Valance?"

"Because of her sharp wit. And teeth."

Lily said nothing. She had never seen so many beautiful books in one place, but she didn't want to touch any of them, in case she discovered the whereabouts of that missing finger.

"Anyway, here it is," Meg said, "the site of Guillotine Valance's last stand." She spread her arms wide and looked around her. "Dad always said that when we Valances are shut indoors, and prevented from going to war, we go a bit crazy."

"Well, in that case, we'd better get you outside," Lily said with a smile, screwing up her courage and grabbing the nearest promising-looking book (Magical Creatures in Poisons and Antidotes) and thinking, with a pang, how much Severus would love this place.

All of a sudden, in the disconsolately draughty library, she missed him. It was like a sudden, bitter chill, creeping down her arms and legs, pricking her skin with little stabs of loss, and making her eyes sting with tears. All her anger at him – at herself – fused into this icy sadness, and all she could think, over and over, was that they could never rifle through this book together.

She had to get outside; things would seem clearer in the sunshine.

"You don't mind?" Meg asked, hurrying to catch up with her. "About me being related to a cannibal?"

"You can't help what your relatives did."

"It's just..." she twisted her fingers, uncharacteristically sheepish. "Well, everything's about who you're related to in the wizard world. And, if you can inherit glory, why can't you inherit guilt?"

Lily hesitated. She had never seen Meg like this. She never worried about whether she had done something wrong. And the idea that her relatives could have done something wrong was tantamount to heresy. But, Lily supposed, there weren't many ways you could justify the killing and eating of children.

"I guess you can't inherit glory or guilt," she said slowly. "I mean, it's not like red hair or freckles. It's not something that's encoded in your genes, is it?"

"I dunno," said Meg. "Madness might be."

Lily patted her on the shoulder. "Don't worry, Meg. Anyone who thinks that Bellatrix Black is an idiot definitely has their head screwed on the right way."

 

That night, Lily had nightmares about Guillotine Valance, whom she imagined as a cackling woman in a powdered wig with brown, broken teeth. At first she had been doing nothing more threatening than brandishing a letter from Hogwarts, which informed Lily that she had failed all her OWLs, but then the dream settled into a more familiar shape. It turned into the recurring nightmare that had troubled Lily from the age of twelve, in which she was being burned at the stake for witchcraft.

She was buffeted by palpable waves of dry heat; fumbling, clammy hands shoved her forward. Her own hands were tied behind her back, and she was wearing a loose white dress, plastered with ash and heaving with her short, panicky breaths. The crowd beneath her bristled with mutters and pitch-forks. She could hear the spitting and cracking of the fire, could see faces in the crowd below, made ruddy with the reflected firelight.

And then Guillotine Valance was tying her to the stake, leaning close, jeering at her. Her breath was hot and foul, and she had Silversmith's milky blue eyes. 

Lily woke herself by crying out. Since she had the entire west wing to herself, she didn't startle anybody, but she tried to quiet herself all the same and lay back down, panting softly, determined to stay awake for a while so that she wouldn't sink into the same nightmare.

Dawn light was starting to appear now, dyeing the room blue. She rolled over to peer at her watch on the bedside table and saw that it was five thirty. She had woken up too early for Meg, who believed in hearty sleep and hearty breakfasts, so she decided to try and find Guillotine Valance in the portrait gallery.

She wanted to reason away her fears, or even be sure what they were, because her skin was still prickling with inexplicable suspense. It was this place, she thought – who could be reasonable in this dilapidated gothic castle, awash with eerie blue dawn-light, in which everything looked as if it were underwater?

She could still feel Guillotine Valance's clammy breath on her neck.

So she shook herself, pulled a dressing-gown over her pyjamas, and shuffled along the stone-flagged corridors, feeling the wonderful coolness of the stone against her bare feet. 

Meg's house was a sprawling gothic castle gone slightly to seed. It had the same grey stone walls and stone-flagged floors as Hogwarts, with the same torches burning in brackets in little alcoves, and an impressive variety of weaponry mounted on the walls. A lot of these swords and axes appeared to be goblin-made; there were plaques underneath them with inscriptions such as 'Torn from the hands of Gornak the Unlikely by Roderick Valance at the Battle of Castlehaven, 1692'.

The cavernous entrance hall was the height of the entire house, criss-crossed with beams and oak stairwells. Lily tiptoed across it, anxious not to wake Silversmith.

She got the feeling this house hadn't been designed to be inhabited. It was more like a military museum. Where rugs softened the flagstone floor, it was for ostentation and not for comfort. They were either embroidered with the Valance coat of arms, or depicted dragons and Hippogriffs, mad-eyed and rearing, being ridden by armoured wizards brandishing swords. Lily amused herself for some moments by watching these little embroidered figures move. Their most probable action would have been to fall off their incensed steeds, but they defied expectation as well as gravity by staying put.

The house was very impressive, but a thick layer of greasy dust was over everything, and many parts of the castle, she soon learned, were derelict and boarded-up. It seemed that the Valances, with no spoils of war to enrich them, were finding that bravery and honour were not as profitable as they had once been. 

Guillotine Valance actually proved to be very beautiful, though with a cruel, pointed mouth rather like Andromeda Black's. (Lily supposed it was not impossible that they were related, since all the pure-blood wizard families had inter-married).

She was strangely colourless, with her white-blonde hair only a fraction darker than her porcelain skin. Her dress was also white – a complicated arrangement of silk, lace and taffeta, in varying shades of milk-white, ice-white, parchment-white, porridge-white. Her eyes, by contrast, were very dark brown and glittered with sardonic amusement.

As she noticed Lily, Guillotine Valance gave a wink and snapped her sharp little teeth playfully.

Lily understood that she was probably something of a tourist attraction in the Valance house, and liked to play up to her reputation. Before she knew it – and against her better judgement – she was smiling back.

Guillotine Valance had a black velvet choker, from which hung a silver pendant – a bright green eye mounted in a silver triangle. It had been painted with bewitching clarity. She wouldn't have been surprised if it had blinked.

"Oh, little girl, little girl," she heard Guillotine Valance murmur, in a tone of chilling tenderness, "If I only had your eyes, I could make a set of matching earrings."

Lily coloured slightly, but still suspected that this remark was playful. It was probable that Guillotine Valance frequently entertained herself, and others, by being as dastardly as possible.

She gazed defiantly back, and even thought that the corners of Guillotine Valance's pointed mouth turned upwards slightly, but this was all she had time to think because the next instant she was jolted back to her senses by the sound of a breathless voice at her elbow. 

"She was innercent, y'know."

It was Silversmith. He was standing very close to her, breathing hard and looking unaccountably triumphant.

Meg was floors away and she wasn't allowed to do magic.

She realised suddenly (because in the grip of extreme emotions Lily often became detached and analytical) what his jerky, irregular movements reminded her of: the way a spider moved. Like a spider, he was always lurking around the skirting-boards, motionless, but dreadfully conspicuous, and then scuttling sharply, suddenly into view. In fact, she felt the same fascinated revulsion towards him that she felt for spiders. 

"Oh, what would you know?" Guillotine Valance muttered disdainfully. "Skulking around the house of my ancestors, not even dusting properly. You disgust me."

Silversmith ignored her. "They never found 'er children because they was took from 'er. Ent that right, madam?"

Guillotine Valance turned her head disdainfully, and said nothing.

Lily's curiosity was battling with her fear. Part of her was casting around for an excuse to leave immediately, to get out of Silversmith's disquieting presence and have a lie down, and the rest was wondering about Guillotine Valance. Eventually, she said: "did you know her?"

"When I was young," he said. "Came with 'er 'usband, didn't I? We was both muggles."

"I didn't know that," she said, casting an apologetic glance at Guillotine Valance.

"Her children was took," Silversmith insisted. "It was a plot ter get rid of the Valances."

She wondered why Silversmith was telling her all this. She could see that he was enjoying himself; his words were gleefully dramatic and his eyes were… well, they were too creamy to shine exactly, but they certainly had a greasy sheen that Lily had never seen there before. Perhaps he was rarely listened-to amongst the Valances, and was dying for an audience.

Lily exerted herself to be kind. "And who would want to get rid of the Valances?" she asked.

"Oh, really," Guillotine Valance interrupted, "bad enough I have to hang up here, as an object of ghoulish curiosity for every passer-by of indifferent pedigree, without having my family name besmirched by a glorified janitor."

Lily, despite hearing herself referred to as a 'passer-by of indifferent pedigree' couldn't help liking Guillotine Valance. She sounded a lot like Meg.

"We'd better not talk about this any more," she said matter-of-factly. "It's upsetting her. And this is her house, after all. Thank you for confiding in me, Mr Silversmith, but I really think it would be disrespectful for you to say any more. I think I'm going to go and find Meg," she added, hoping that he wouldn't offer to assist her.

And, miraculously, wonderfully, he turned his eyes away, shrugging. Lily seized her opportunity – with a respectful nod to Guillotine Valance, which could not quite conceal her elation – she hurried from the room.


	8. The Slytherin Commonroom

In some ways, going back to the Slytherin common-room after the holidays was like coming home for Severus. It was a cool little haven of shadow – and there were plenty of out-of-the-way places in which to curl up with a book on dark magic, and plot hideous revenges on the Gryffindor Quidditch team.

People there were interested in magic – oh, they would still mock you for saying the wrong thing, or having an inferior blood-line – and they would probably mock you with more persistence than an idiot Gryffindor knew how to command – but no branch of magic was frowned upon here. The Slytherins understood that there was nothing intrinsically good or bad about magic, only the uses it was put to.

The common-room itself was dark and luxurious. It did not immediately look like the sort of room that would have been comfortable. The walls were cold stone (and usually rather damp), there were no windows, the ceiling was low and the floor uncarpeted, but capacious leather arm-chairs dotted the room, and every once in a while you stepped on a rug so soft and lusciously thick that you sank several inches into it (in fact, there was one - known collectively and affectionately amongst the Slytherins as 'Quick-Sandy' - that wouldn't let your feet go once you had sunken into it, unless you started singing. Nowadays, she only ensnared first-years and visitors from other houses, because everyone else knew to jump over her). The massive stone fireplace gave off a powerful heat, and the sickly scent of the smoke emanating from it made the air thick.

The room resembled a fascinating hunting lodge. There were animal heads on the walls, but these were of werewolves and manticores, rather than stags and bears. There were glass cases containing curious objects - a unicorn's horn, for example, and an enormous talon, with a milky-white stone clasped within it. This, a card beneath the case informed the reader, had been the talon of Rowena Ravenclaw's giant eagle and what it clutched within it was petrified memory - Ravenclaw's memories, frozen in stone, and inaccessible, even to the most brilliant wizarding minds. Many wondered why Ravenclaw had set posterity an unsolvable puzzle, but these were generally the people who didn't know enough about Rowena Ravenclaw to understand that most of the puzzles she had set were unsolvable to anyone but her. 

The room was a testament to the power of curiosity. You would be more comfortable in the Gryffindor common-room, but not so well-informed. Slytherins, like all good academics, never really relaxed. 

Reclining luxuriously by the fire was Bellatrix Black. Her eyes were heavily-lidded, and these lids had long, thick, drooping lashes, so that only the odd flash of dark iris could be seen beneath them. She looked as though she couldn't be bothered to open her eyes properly. She (like her sister) seemed permanently, imperiously bored but (unlike her sister) this expression was not softened by a pretty face. 

She was stroking a tortoiseshell cat that had settled on her lap. As Snape watched, she pointed her wand at it, and said, almost lazily: 'Crucio'.

Where Lily had an embarrassing excess of tenderness, Bellatrix had a worrying excess of aggression. It came out in odd and unexpected ways. For example, if you made her laugh (something that Snape tried to avoid anyway, because of the ear-splitting sound), she would slap or punch you hard on the arm in what she evidently assumed was an affectionate manner. He had also found that it was generally advisable not to sneak up on her. 

"New pet, Bella?" he asked cautiously.

"It's Pettigrew's."

"Oh." Snape brightened a little. He thought for a while, and then said. "You should do that in front of him."

Bella was cruel, but not particularly ingenious. Sometimes she needed a push in the right (or rather, wrong) direction. She seemed preoccupied at the moment, however.

"Snape," she murmured, watching the cat struggle under her wand. "Do you think some people feel pain more than others?"

Snape tried to think of a response that would neither amuse nor provoke her. He was always looking for this magical middle-ground with Bellatrix, but kept missing it, perhaps because it was only an inch wide, perhaps because it was nonexistent. 

"I think you're creative enough to make up the deficit, Bella."

She laughed and slapped him, this time around the face.

"Did you finish Slughorn's Antidotes essay?" she went on casually.

Snape was still holding his face. He was very angry with himself. "No, I'll do it tomorrow. I've got another detention with Dumbledore." In a voice dripping with disdain, he added. "This time, he assures me, there will be chocolate biscuits."

Bella shrugged contemptuously. It was amazing how much she resembled her cousin, Sirius, when she did this. "What kind of a teacher is he?"

"The senile kind," Snape said, without thinking.

Bella laughed again and punched him on the arm. Fortunately, she was distracted from any further demonstrations of approval by the entrance of Avery, Wilkes and Rodolphus Lestrange, Bella's long-suffering boyfriend.

Rodolphus was pale and listless. He had a very long face. He was slow on the uptake, but once he'd got an idea into his head, he didn't let it go. Bellatrix had decided that she was going to marry him sometime in their third year, and there was no arguing with Bellatrix (or, at least, not for Rodolphus).

Wilkes was thick-set and freckled. Avery was thin and elfish. He had rather pointed ears and teeth. Of the three, he was the only one with a glimmering of intelligence, but he would only apply it in the cause of cruelty. On the single occasion he had received a good mark in Transfiguration, (on the day they had been transforming toads into tea-cups), Avery had stolen Mary Macdonald's toad to transfigure and, when it was a perfect tea-cup, smashed it right in front of her. He had even stamped on the shattered pieces (which, to Snape's mind, had been somewhat excessive. It had looked like the sort of absent-minded savagery that Bellatrix usually came out with). 

He remembered waiting with Lily outside Professor McGonagall's office while the pieces of teacup were painstakingly reassembled back into a toad.

Mary had emerged from the office, red-faced and panting, and when Lily had said: "What happened, Mary? Is he… is he dead?", Mary had burst into tears and run off up the corridor in hysterics.

"I'd call that a big 'yes'" Snape had said, leaning against the wall and staring indifferently after her.

"I'll get him for this." Lily had said, her low voice prickling with quiet ferocity.

"It's only a toad."

"Oh, 'only a toad', 'only a Muggle'! Everything's always 'only' to you, isn't it? Don't you care about anything?"

Snape hadn't known what to say to this, so he had let her storm off up the corridor after Mary. 

This had been the beginning of a bitter feud between Mary Macdonald and Avery, which, for a while, had taken the form of a friendly contest between Snape and Lily, to see who could teach their friends the best hexes to use against their enemy. Snape had, of course, prudently let her win. He hadn't wanted her to know how many horrific curses he was familiar with. 

Avery, Wilkes and Rodolphus settled in the good seats by the fire (turfing out some first-year girls, who had already been sitting in them) and slouched with the languorous arrogance that only teenage boys can pull off.

"Hey, Severus?" Avery said, taking a copy of a magazine, Manic and Magical Monsters, out of his bag (Avery's favourite subject was Care of Magical Creatures, though the creatures in question had to have pretty big fangs in order to excite his interest). "You know that Ravenclaw Quidditch Captain? Davey? The one who's going out with your red-haired Mudblood friend?"

Snape closed his eyes momentarily and then said, in a hollow voice: "'Mudblood friend' is a contradiction in terms."

Bellatrix barked with laughter and punched him again. This time, though, Snape felt her attack as a welcome distraction from a different kind of pain, and he almost smiled at her. 

"Well," Avery went on, "McGonagall's just given him about a month's worth of detentions. Apparently, he was trying to break into Madam Hooch's office to jinx the Gryffindor team's broomsticks. Don't think his Mudblood was too pleased with him. In fact, I have it on good authority that his Mudblood finished with him. Imagine how you'd feel if even a Mudblod didn't want you!"

Snape didn't need to imagine, but was too happy to dwell on that fact now. A grin spread irresistibly across his sallow face. And the best part was, he didn't even have to hide it. It was practically admirable for a Slytherin to be happy about the misfortunes of a Quidditch Player from a rival house.

Of course, this didn't change anything about Potter. Potter was still going to pay.

He spent the rest of the evening waiting around for Narcissa to make an appearance in the common-room. She wouldn't be keen to speak to him, because she knew he was friends with Lucius Malfoy – if the term 'friendship' could really be applied to a cautious, tactical alliance between Slytherins. But he needed her key to the Black family vault, and her icy disdain would be positively soothing after all her sister's slaps and punches. Maybe that was why Mr and Mrs Black had brought Narcissa up to be so cold – they knew that a soothing ice-pack would be required after Bella's fiery excesses.

When she eventually swanned into the room, she was a picture of elegance. She wore the same school-uniform as everyone else but, somehow, she managed to make it look like an expensive, designer evening-dress from Madam Malkin's.   
She was very thin – Snape suspected she had been making use of the Dark Diets book in the Restricted Section – and glacial, both in manner and appearance. Her features were delicate and exquisite, as though they had been sculpted out of ice, and her eyes were grey and dead-looking, like Dementor flesh.

Snape had spoken to her only once before, in Knockturn Alley, in the Tavern opposite Borgin and Burkes, the Hanged Man. He had been explaining to Lucius Malfoy how to use Undetectable Poisons (which needed to be Disillusioned before they were administered), and she had waltzed in, with her House Elf behind her carrying a teetering stack of boxes. Flirting was difficult for Narcissa, because she never seemed to smile, but she had stared through her delicate eyelashes at Malfoy while he flirted with her, and wrinkled her nose at Snape. If someone was powerful, however, Narcissa learned to be civil to them, and she had evidently sensed power in Snape, because she had deigned to give him a haughty little nod when she passed him in the corridors ever since. 

Malfoy had had his eye on her ever since she was born. There were only so many pure-blood witches, and he was adamant that, if he was going to marry one of the Black sisters, it was going to be the prettiest. Snape had advised him to give the compulsively sadistic Bellatrix a wide berth (though, as it turned out, Lucius rather liked aggressive women). Andromeda, who was haughty and impressive, but outspoken and full of dangerous opinions, was probably not going to meet with Malfoy's approval either, so that just left the Ice Queen.

Snape liked her better than the other Black sisters, though there was no denying that she was tedious. Her conversation was almost alarmingly shallow. Whenever he sat near her and her friends at the Slytherin table, the incessant babble about dress robes, parties and love potions made his head hurt.

When Snape approached her in the common room, she brushed her hair out of her eyes with unconscious elegance and blinked enquiringly at him.

"Have you come to apologise for him?" she asked coldly. "I should have known he'd send one of his lackeys to do his dirty work."

Snape shook his head calmly. "No, I haven't. This leaves two possibilities. Either I'm not Malfoy's lackey, or he didn't even consider you worth a lackey. I do hope you'll opt for the former. It's the one most flattering to both of us, after all."

He would not have thought it possible but Narcissa seemed to grow paler. The effect of this was to make her almost translucent. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, clearing the books from the armchair next to her so that he could sit down. "What do you want?"

He surveyed her coldly before sitting down. Some civil preliminaries were clearly required before he got to the point. "I came to see how you were." He smiled slightly, then added. "You looked terrible in the Great Hall this evening." 

"Thank you for your concern, Severus," she muttered. A blush looked as though it was trying to surface through the thick ice of her complexion. "But I'll be fine. Mr Malfoy is not the only pure-blood wizard in the world."

This was like modifying the phrase 'There are plenty more fish in the sea' to read 'There are about five more fish in the sea', and Narcissa seemed to know it, because she gave a delicate little cough (nothing as vulgar as a laugh had been known to issue from that perfect little mouth), and continued.

"After all, I have a great deal to recommend me."

"Certainly," he said

She sniffed. "I keep listening to that muggle song 'Unbreak My Heart'. It's perfect."

"It would be perfect if it was called 'Un-sleep With My Sister'."

Narcissa collapsed into tears again. Snape sighed wearily and decided it would probably be best to come back later.


	9. Hemlock and Vanilla

Narcissa Black's dressing table was legendary. It was littered with glass bottles and phials, each filled with a different coloured liquid - purple, greenish silver, mother-of-pearl, and even one that changed colour every time you looked at it - some gurgling and fizzing as though trying to escape their bottles. They might have been harmless perfumes, but it was popularly rumoured that many contained poisons and love potions. There were soft, multi-coloured Fwooper-feather brushes, tubs of powder, and pungent, heavy-scented creams. Here and there, she would leave a black opal broche, an ornate silver bracelet set with glimmering emeralds, but none of the other girls in her dormitory ever touched these valuable jewels. It was widely-known that Black family heirlooms could not be touched by non-members of the family - at least, not without incurring blisters, boils, un-removable stinks, even swarms of flies - the Black witches were jealous of their treasures and creative in their cursing. 

In the drawers beneath, there were handbooks on magical vanity, detailing the often malignant spells that could keep witches thin, unblemished and glowing with apparent health. Dark Magic, after all, was about gaining power, and there was no doubt that beauty conferred power. The idea that beauty could be enjoyed for its own sake had never occurred to Narcissa; she would have found it rather selfish.

This was Narcissa's laboratory. All the Black sisters were experimental - which was odd for girls who had been brought up to believe that the old ways and old blood-lines must be preserved at any cost. Bellatrix experimented with the science of cruelty, but this was too crude for Narcissa. She was naturally very indolent - not troubled with the fervour and zeal that afflicted Bella - but it did not follow that she was therefore lazy. She, like all Dark witches, wanted to experiment, wanted to test the limits of what magic could do and, more specifically (because the lust for power was in her blood, after all), what it could do for her.

She was not clever but she had a good eye for what suited her, and a great deal of money, which meant that she could acquire the most potent and exotic magical ingredients without too much difficulty. Sometimes, she would buy an ingredient - powdered werewolf tooth, spine of lionfish, crushed scarab beetles, or leaves from the Indonesian Butterfly Tree - for no particular reason, just because it looked good or sounded promising. She would put them away -folded carefully in tissue paper - and wait until a possibility occurred to her.

She had heard that unicorn blood, when rubbed into the skin, would prevent a woman from ever getting wrinkles, but Narcisa had never been able to get hold of this precious commodity, even with her vast fortune. It didn't bother her much, because she didn't need it yet, and when she did, she would have a lifetime's worth of favours to call in. 

Of course, where she had any doubt about an ingredient, she would never experiment on herself. Her face was too valuable, both for her own prospects and her family's, to risk. She needed to make a good, pure-blood marriage, and she wanted power in her own right. She wanted to set her whiles to work in the Ministry for Magic, in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement or the Department of International Magical Co-operation - somewhere she could make a difference.

Occasionally, she would pay fellow-students to try out her new potions and cosmetics. More often, however, she would plant them in the drinks of unsuspecting muggle-borns or Gryffindors. That way, if they went wrong, she was at least making a political statement.

Narcissa wasn't too interested in politics yet. Beyond the odd nose-wrinkling, Mudblood-calling activities that most of her fellow-Slytherins indulged in, she was content to let her enemies be. 

But when she got to the Ministry of Magic, all that was going to change. Quietly, charmingly, without impassioned speeches or vulgar campaigning, but in the background, whispering in the ears of Ministers and Judges while her perfume worked on their senses, she was going to get her way. 

When painting her nails or mirror-gazing, Narcissa could hypnotise herself into a state of calm, dauntless knowing. Everything would become clear to her: which colours to mix, which scents could influence the feelings of her prey, and in which directions. In this hypnotised state, possibilities would occur to her, combinations, experiments. She liked to think of this creative process as listening to her blood. She believed that great power, instinct, even intelligence, flowed through her veins, inherited from her noble ancestors, concentrated by their uncorrupted lineage.

The results of these entranced ideas were not always what she had hoped but she made the occasional break-through. She had discovered, for example, that a potion made from Billywig Stings (the Billywig was an Australian insect whose sting caused people to levitate temporarily), if taken every day, would eliminate the need for a witch to wear a bra.

Even when her ideas did not work, Narcissa was not the sort of girl to be disheartened, because she had never been heartened, and she was always careful to ensure that any unpleasant side-effects of her experiments were restricted to her enemies.

At the moment, she was holding a little glass bottle embossed with delicate white bones from a Golden Snidget's wing. They were in place to keep the oily, black potion within from decaying. The bottle was filled with Acromantula Venom - non-lethal in small doses; in fact, a tiny drop actually caused the cheeks to glow and the eyes to sparkle, because it induced a mild fever. She had discovered this by slipping a little into Mary MacDonald's pumpkin juice. The Mudblood had never looked so good.

Narcissa sighed. People really did not appreciate what she did for them, what she did for women everywhere. 

Tonight, however, she doubted she would be using the contents of this bottle for cosmetic purposes. Tonight, she was turning her cool, methodical attention to the business of revenge. She was sedentary and indolent by nature, but she could still feel anger; it made her brow wrinkle in a way she didn't like.

Narcissa rhythmically dabbed blusher onto her high, delicate cheek-bones and pondered. 

 

Ten minutes later, she glided down the stairs to the Slytherin common room and scanned the crowd for Severus Snape.

She was glowing with the consciousness of her beauty (which, of course, only enhanced it). Her skin was white and disconcertingly matte, like powdered snow that had been crushed and compacted into a flawless finish. Her eyes were hooded with shimmering green eye-shadow (made from powdered dragon scales) and she had dabbed her neck with Befuddlement Perfume, a mixture of Hemlock and vanilla that reduced the intelligence of any man who inhaled it. Of course, it meant that if anyone kissed her on the neck, they would be poisoned. She was going to have to remember to stop using it when she went on dates. At the moment, however, she was not interested in that kind of thing. She wanted power, not passion.

She would discover passion later. In fact, eventually, she would be its slave but, at the moment, she didn't care whether the men who kissed her neck did get poisoned. As far as she was concerned, it was a fitting punishment for the audacity of touching her. 

She had discovered that some men were immune to her cosmetic ingenuity, but she had never thought that this might be because they were already in love. Love was a subject Narcissa seldom thought of; she was not sentimental; like all good pure-blood witches, she considered love as a superfluous ingredient in life (it was especially superfluous in marriage). As a means of gaining power, it was too uncertain, and as a means of receiving comfort, it was too unreliable. Better to put your trust in what you could control. 

She found Severus Snape in a corner of the Common Room, hunched in a chair beside the fire. He looked tense - like a tightly-wound spring, poised to recoil at anyone who approached him. He was often like this; solitary but vicious. He reminded Narcissa of a Copperhead snake or a stalking jungle cat. She approved of these images; they invested Snape with the grace and beauty that he so conspicuously lacked.

Narcissa was breathtakingly shallow, and so would normally wrinkle her nose at Snape for his greasy hair and sallow skin, his jerky movements and perpetual frown. He was not normally someone she would allow herself to be seen with, but there was something impressive about his fierce, unhappy face.

She didn't think he was too clever to be manipulated - Narcissa's magic could not be undone by cleverness - but she determined to be careful with him all the same.

"You were going to ask me something," she said abruptly, hands on her hips, "when you spoke to me earlier today."

Snape looked up from his book. For a moment, his face was inscrutable, but then it curved into a smile.

"I was just concerned about you," he said. 

"You really weren't sent by him to keep an eye on me?"

"By who?"

"Luci -," Narcissa stopped. She couldn't bring herself to say his first name. "Mr Malfoy," she corrected herself smoothly.

"No."

Snape's voice was gentle but Narcissa still bristled. So Mr Malfoy didn't even think she was worth an apology! She calmed herself, however, and pressed her face into a smile.

Snape was considering her with the same inscrutable expression that had puzzled her to begin with.

"I heard from a girl in your dormitory that you have Acromantula venom," he said.

Narcissa smiled. She leaned closer to him, so that he could smell her perfume. "You won't tell Slughorn, will you?" she whispered. 

"He'd probably try to buy it off you," Snape said with a shrug. "But no, I won't tell him. Where did you get it?"

"I have an uncle who works in the Office of Confiscated Magical Substances. He brings me lots of things."

Snape made a mental note of this. 

Narcissa sat on the arm of his chair and leaned down so that she could whisper in his ear. She smelled sickly sweet - a scent that reminded Snape of rotting hot-house flowers, but he didn't draw back when she leaned forward.

"I need your help, Severus," she said. "You see, I need to get even with him. For the sake of my family's honour. You can understand that, can't you? I mean, you're half-muggle but -,"

Snape raised his eyebrows, but Narcissa recovered beautifully.

"The Princes," she said, "were a fine wizarding family. They even had a connection with the Blacks, going back to when Claudia Black -,"

" - Married Moribund Prince," he interrupted. "I know."

Narcissa leaned forward again. Her lips were almost touching his ear. "Then you'll know that members of the Black family always avenge their wrongs. I am going to poison Lucius Malfoy." 

Snape could absorb any amount of shocking information without the barest flicker of surprise. He never had any trouble believing the worst of people. So there was nothing but simple curiosity in his voice when he asked:

"Aren't you a little young to be plotting murder?"

"I'm fifteen," Narcissa protested, in her warm, forceful, fragrant whisper. "Claudia Black was fifteen when she married your ancestor."

Snape wasn't quite sure what she was getting at there, but he listened politely all the same. 

For the first time, Narcissa's voice resonated with enthusiasm. "My great grandmother poisoned six husbands and eight lovers. My grandmother made a coat out of the skins of muggles who failed to show her the proper respect (she said it repelled jinxes because it was so thoroughly un-magical). My mother transfigured a servant who'd been stealing from her into a hind and had her dogs chase him across the moors until they tore him apart."

"Well, at least she was sporting about it," Snape said. 

"My point is that Black women are not to be trifled with."

Severus thought that 'trifled with' was a rather mild expression for what Malfoy had been doing to Bellatrix at his manor house during the holidays. Not for the first time, he regretted being privy to so much sensitive information.

"So what do you intend to do to Malfoy?" he asked.

Narcissa shrugged languidly. "I was thinking of Amortentia."

Again, Severus exhibited no surprise. "That's a very complicated potion," he said mechanically, as though reading these lines from a script. "You'd probably need an experienced potion-brewer to help you."

Narcissa smiled. "He'd have to be absolutely the best in the school," she said artfully. "Or I wouldn't trust him with such a delicate operation."

Snape raised his eyebrows. "I think we could manage that."

"You'd do it for me?" she asked softly.

Snape hesitated. He was angry; he could feel it bubbling under his skin, always just beneath the surface. It was a kind of constant background drone. He wanted to hurt Lily, just to get her attention, just to get her to look at him again, and he hated himself for it. 

Suddenly, he found himself looking into Narcissa's dead, grey eyes and feeling sick.

But this was all he had now. The past was wrecked. And if that was gone, it didn't matter what else he wrecked.

"Yes," he said. "I'll do it. But maybe you could do something for me in return."

Narcissa's charming smile faltered, but she recovered magnificently. "Anything."

"I need you to fetch the Dark Snitch from your family vault, and make sure Potter gets hold of it."

Narcissa hesitated. She didn't understand Quidditch, but she was quite well-versed in dark magic, and she knew the Dark Snitch's reputation. Still, she was un-shockable. After all, murder and curses – if inflicted on the right people – were time-honoured traditions in her family.

Her first, instinctive, thought was: what right does this skinny son-of-a-muggle have to plot the ruin of pure-blood wizards? But that was soon replaced by the equally snobbish consideration that the pure-bloods he was targeting were an embarrassment to their family names in any case. It would be no loss to the wizarding world if a blood-traitor like Potter was prudently disposed of. And, if Sirius got in the way – as he always did when Potter was involved – then a potential source of embarrassment to her own family would be removed as well.

Of course, she didn't necessarily want him dead. Just humbled. Perhaps Severus Snape wanted the same thing – although it was difficult to believe at this moment, as she stared into his smouldering black eyes.

"Very well," she said, smoothing out the creases in her skirt. "And, in return, you will brew the Amortentia? And make sure Malfoy drinks it?"

He nodded briefly. "It might kill him, you know."

Narcissa gave him a withering look. She wanted to say that she knew more about love potions than he could possibly imagine; she wanted to say that every girl in her family had been brought up to experiment with them from the age of five. But it was vulgar to advertize one's own gifts, especially when she had more immediately noticeable gifts which would always keep her interlocutor's eyes busy.

Snape's eyes didn't linger on her as much as she would have liked, though. He was staring angrily into the middle distance, as though seeing a whole parade of humiliations and bitter memories pass before his eyes. He frightened her a little, when he was too lost in fury to notice her charms. It made her feel powerless, and she was not accustomed to feeling powerless. 

"Tell me what you want me to do," she said, in an effort to nudge him out of his preoccupation.

He blinked, re-focused on her, and said: "Get the Dark Snitch from the vault and take it to the locker-room after the Gryffindor team's practice tomorrow night. Potter always hangs around there with his cronies, milking their praise." That last sentence was spat out with venom. "Let him see you trying to plant the box in Madam Hooch's locker. Let him think he's discovered an attempted sabotage – just so long as he gets his hands on the Dark Snitch. His own ego will do the rest."

"Is he going to believe I'd be that stupid?" Narcissa asked. "Planting the snitch in the locker room immediately after the Gryffindor team practice?"

"Trust me," said Snape darkly, "he'll be too caught up in his own cleverness to consider your stupidity."

Narcissa sniffed. She didn't really like the way that had been phrased.

Still, it would be no great stretch to fool Potter. She was a good actress. Women who set out to trap rich pure-bloods into marriage had to be. She was pretty enough and rich enough not to need the traps, of course, but there was an art to it. It was her family craft; the consuming passion of all her ingenious female ancestors, and Narcissa idolized her female ancestors above everyone else in the world.

Somehow, she sensed that Severus Snape would give her plenty of scope for her wiles. For the first time, she was beginning to realize how satisfying it would be to be an active participant in your own success, rather than having it handed to you on a plate. Severus wouldn't understand that, of course. Probably, nothing had ever been handed to him on a plate until somebody else had finished with it. But still, there was something enthralling about his dark eyes and his nervous energy. She knew immediately that she needed to stay on his good side.


	10. Knockturn Alley

Lucius Malfoy had milky-blonde hair and a sneering, lop-sided smile, which women seemed to find irresistible. He was practically royalty in the wizarding world, so old and well respected was his family. He radiated an air of authority that could send people scuttling away, scattering apologies and belongings alike, as they hurried to get out of his grave, dark-blue gaze. Yet, for all his advantages, he was solemn and joyless. He didn't seem to enjoy his fortune or his popularity with women; they were things to be exhibited, not enjoyed, as marks of his status. He saw the degeneration of wizarding society everywhere, and he seemed to be taking it personally.  
  
He hadn't always been like this. The Hogwarts teachers remembered him as a marauding, skirt-chasing libertine, who sank his teeth into every physical pleasure his vast fortune could provide, sneaking fire-whisky into his dormitory, getting caught in a broom cupboard with the pretty Defence Against the Dark Arts Teacher, Professor Moorland, who'd had to retire in disgrace, even experimenting with the two Unforgettable Curses (which were banned for use by under-eighteens). But then, a year after leaving the school, Lucius Malfoy had had an epiphany.   
  
The story went that he had woken up one morning, to the sounds of his own personal wizard orchestra, between sheets of finest silk embroidered with gold brocade, surrounded by beautiful women, two of whom were kissing each other, and thought: there has to be more to life than this.      
  
Snape found him waiting at the entrance to Knockturn Alley, as they had arranged. Lucius was gazing with furrowed brow at a rowdy group of red-haired children, who were daring each other to go into Knockturn Alley. As they noticed Lucius, the colour drained visibly from their faces, and they shuffled closer together.    
  
"Don't meddle with things you can't handle, blood-traitor brats," he growled. It was barely more than a whisper, but the children scattered all the same, yelping as though they had been stung.   
  
Snape was in awe of this ability to command instant terror. He watched, enthralled, as Lucius gave a dignified sniff and turned into Knockturn Alley. The lurking shoppers that thronged the street melted out of his way instantly.   
  
"Come with me, Severus," he murmured, in a slightly softened voice. "Let me show you the life you are destined for."    
  
Snape looked around. He had been to Knockturn Alley many times before. His parents had never cared where he got to, so he had spent a lot of time down this street, staring hungrily in at the windows of Borgin and Burkes (looking at shrunken heads, pickled toads, werewolf teeth), snatching at scraps of overheard conversations about Unforgivable Curses and Inferi. He was fascinated by this secret world of old, combative magic. He knew the vendors of the street very well, since many of them had chased him away from their shops or stalls at some point during his childhood.  
  
There was the witch - Jenny Greenteeth (it did not take much imagination to see how she'd got her name) - who tried to sell human hair and fingernails, which she displayed proudly on a tray, occasionally rattling this under the noses of passing pedestrians (except she knew, somehow, who the important ones were, because she backed away from Malfoy in an obsequious crouch whenever he came down the street). She claimed that her gruesome wares were collected from important Ministry of Magic officials, who could then be controlled or tortured if the specimens were used in certain potions. She even said she had the Minister for Magic's side-burns, and the nostril hair of the Head of the Auror Office. This would have been more convincing if all of the hair she displayed was not the same muddy blonde colour as her own.   
  
A tabby cat with tattered ears wound its way between people's legs. This was rumoured to be an Animagus who got stuck in his animal form twenty years ago. As a human, he'd been a famous Auror, and it was said that even as a cat, he still followed Dark Wizards obsessively. Malfoy always made a point of stroking him.    
  
Black ivy twisted itself around the street-lamps, shading the light and occasionally snaking across the shoulders of any lingering pedestrians, like an over-friendly salesman. It was a bad idea to stay in one place for too long when you came down Knockturn Alley.   
  
Outside Borgin and Burkes there was a goblin pushing a wheelbarrow, the contents of which were covered by a greying sheet. This discrete effect was ruined by the lifeless hand hanging out beneath the sheet, trailing in the scummy puddles as the goblin walked along. Snape had seen these kind of vendors before - Carrion Pigeons, they were called. There was a trade in human flesh down Knockturn Alley - both the living and the dead kind.   
  
A peeling, wooden sign over a set of cellar steps next to Borgin and Burkes read: Dancing Girls: Metamorphmagi - Veela - Scarlet Women.   
  
Snape didn't know what Scarlet Women were. He idly hoped that they were women with scarlet hair, like his Lily. In later years, he would find out that they were bored housewives, who had overdosed on a potion called Rosura, which was designed to help you find even the most unpleasant or familiar people attractive. If you took too much, the effects were permanent; Scarlet Women were driven wild with desire by any man they saw, but the potion had an unfortunate side-effect. It turned the skin permanently red. If you were not put off by this, they were fun. Lucius had once smuggled a pair of them into Professor Dumbledore's office, in the hope that they might tempt him. Dumbledore had given them a cup of tea and a bag of Lemondrops each and sent them home.   
  
Snape remembered the obligatory talk on Potion Abuse that his class had endured in their first year at Hogwarts. Slughorn had turned pink and plunged into this memorised monologue, his moustache rustling in a breathless kind of way:  
  
"A true potion-maker exercises self-restraint. A wizard can use potions to solve many of life's little problems - timidity, unhappiness, unattractiveness."   
  
He waited resignedly for the sniggers to die down.   
  
"But these are only temporary solutions," he went on. "Prolonged use of potions can result in quite horrific - and irreversible - side effects. If you over-indulge in mood-altering potions, for example, you become unable to moderate the tone of your voice. You have to shout everything, to everyone."  
  
"I've got that, Sir!" bellowed Sirius Black.  
  
Slughorn's moustache twitched. "What a shame for Gryffindor House. Your unfortunate condition has just lost them five points."   
  
More sniggers - this time from the Slytherins. Snape was pleased to see Lily sinking her face into her hands.    
  
"I will refrain from mentioning the debilitating side effects that ensue if you overdose on -," he cleared his throat awkwardly - "Enlarging Potions."   
  
It was a full five minutes before the class stopped laughing this time. Clouds of dust, and the odd spider, were dislodged from the ceiling.   
  
Slughorn was obviously used to this. He began examining his fingernails languidly, as though he found nothing more soothing than the sound of children's laughter.     
  
"Therefore, let me advise you all to be vigilant. Potions are useful shortcuts; they create results that you would ordinarily have to work very hard for and, as such, they are highly addictive. They must be judiciously and sparingly used in day-to-day life. Judgement and self-restraint are qualities that every good potion-maker must cultivate."   
  
There was a pet shop in Knockturn Alley too - the display window was stacked with glass cases displaying tangles of writhing snakes, sleek black rats, and water-tanks filled with leering Grindylows. Crows shuffled and croaked on their perches beside some mournful grey-green birds with deep-set, hooded eyes: these, Snape had discovered, were Augureys; their cries were once believed to cause instant death, but it was now known that they sang only when it was about to rain. Severus could only assume that Dark Wizards kept them in order to frighten the credulous and create a forbidding atmosphere around their homes.   
  
The Hanged Man was almost empty. It was, for a pub in Knockturn Alley, surprisingly clean and comfortable. It looked a lot like the Slytherin common-room, with plush carpets, creaking leather arm-chairs and severed werewolf-heads mounted on the walls. Only the windows were grimy - and Snape suspected that this was for pragmatic reasons, to ensure that nobody could peer in, because the window-frames were spotless.    
  
Lucius nodded curtly to the bar-tender, a badly-shaven man with stooping shoulders and dark circles under his eyes. He was trembling uncontrollably, and dropped a glass when Lucius looked over at him.   
  
"Why does he shake like that?" Severus asked as they made their way into a badly-lit corridor behind the bar.   
  
"He's cursed," Lucius said shortly. "He angered the Dark Lord - and the Dark Lord's curses are as enduring as they are ingenious. He cannot eat or sleep; he cannot rest. His only duty is to serve the Death Eaters. If he does that, the symptoms are alleviated somewhat, for a time. Since he proved himself untrustworthy, the Dark Lord decided that this was the best way to ensure his loyalty."  
  
Severus was enthralled. "How did he do that?" he asked.   
  
Lucius smiled indulgently. "Cursing - that is, the exertion of your will upon another - is one of the first things he will teach you, if you care to learn. Your foolish Headmaster imagines that magic is a co-operative, rather than a competitive, enterprise. But all magic is about control; it is about imposing your will on others, or on your surroundings. It is about making your mark on this weak world, by whatever means necessary."  
  
Severus listened eagerly, but said nothing. Perhaps Lucius Malfoy was used to these awed silences from his companions, because he didn't seem to notice Severus again until they reached a dark, smoky room off the corridor, accessible through a beaded curtain of dark green stones. A powerful scent was emanating from it; sweet and cloying, like incense; it lingered in the throat and made Snape think of smoky fingers reaching into his mouth and around his neck.   
  
"This," Lucius went on, "is where we brew potions that the Ministry, in its cowardice, has banned. The Dark Lord is anxious that we do not lose all this magical knowledge simply because the government finds it threatening. He believes that wizards should be free to perform whatever form of magic they please. It is their birth-right, after all."   
  
Lucius knew exactly how to interest him. He had soon come to the conclusion that Severus Snape was an academic; he didn't care about politics. To him, all magic was beautiful, whatever use it might be put to, and the idea that some spells should be forgotten, simply because people might get hurt, was a horrific one to him.   
  
Lucius didn't turn into the smoky room, but continued up the corridor. The second room they reached was crowded with witches and wizards, all of them shouting and screeching, most of them waving their hands in the air. Snape couldn't see what the room contained, because there were too many figures blocking his view, but he could hear dull, sickening thuds through all the screeching.   
  
"Muggle-baiting," Lucius explained. "Not pretty. And I've just had my dinner, so I think we'll skip that room."   
  
He continued up the corridor, and Severus hastened to keep up.   
  
"What's muggle-baiting?" he asked eagerly.   
  
"It is a sport," Lucius replied, "far more sophisticated than Quidditch. Two wizards duel by each putting a Muggle under the Imperius Curse and making them fight to the death. Far more civilized than harming a fellow wizard. And it sharpens the mind. Trains a wizard in exerting his magical influence over the weak-willed. That, as the Dark Lord has often said, is the only skill essential to our success."   
  
The corridor ended abruptly with an oak-panelled doorway, almost indistinguishable from the walls on either side. In the dim light, Snape could only just make out the hinges.   
  
"What's in here?" he asked.   
  
"Would you like to see?" Lucius asked, smiling in a conspiratorial way. "This is what I brought you here for."   
  
He twirled his wand in a complicated pattern, and the door opened. Snape felt a brief sense of anticlimax when he realised that the only thing in this room was a dark row of bookshelves, but this was replaced by a heady, swooping sense of excitement when he realised what kind of books these were.              
  
"Mind magic," said Lucius Malfoy. "That is what fascinates you, is it not? Dumbledore keeps no books on that subject, not even in the Restricted Section (which, incidentally, is the most extraordinary hypocrisy, because I know he practises Legilimency himself). But here you may learn the art of penetrating the mind - stealing memories, extracting information, controlling behaviour." He laid a delicate stress on the last two words, and lifted one of his almost-invisible eyebrows. "That is the essence of all magic - a battle of wills. And the two things that enable a wizard to succeed in this are imagination and resolution, both of which you have in excess. You will be a very useful servant to the Dark Lord someday."   
  
Snape, who had been eagerly examining a black leather book with polished bones embossed on the spine, suddenly looked up at him. His mouth was taut with suppressed enthusiasm, and he was breathing hard through his nostrils. He looked exultant, but there was still something doubtful about the look he directed at Lucius Malfoy. Malfoy decided not to press him.   
  
"Someday," he repeated, with a smile. "For now, you're free to come here whenever you like, to read, brew potions or practise muggle-baiting. There is a whole world of magic that has been kept from you, Severus. Dumbledore and the Ministry have kept you from achieving your full potential because they fear it. And well they should."   
  
Lucius Malfoy was not as clever as Snape, but he was observant. He might sneer at the majority of the people he met, but he understood them; he knew what motivated them, because he had so frequently bribed, cajoled or bullied them in order to get his way. In fact, this understanding was especially necessary with clever people, because Malfoy knew how useful they could be, and how inconvenient they could make themselves if they were not under his control.  
  
He recognised Snape's desire to be feared and respected. He had a sadistic streak, and a wonderful steadfast resolution - very characteristic of Slytherins - which meant that he wasn't troubled by squeamishness or social taboos; there was literally nothing that he wouldn't do to get what he wanted. Unfortunately for Lucius, this particular characteristic of Snape's was going to get him poisoned.     
  
They made their way back to the bar of the Hanged Man, and sat down under the smoky rafters, watching the trembling barman as he poured and spilled every drink. Severus, his mind still swimming with potion-fumes and books bound in dragon-hide, offered to buy Malfoy a drink. A stupid gesture, because Malfoy was obscenely rich and Severus only had enough money for one-and-a-half butter-beers. But it was a stupid gesture that Malfoy seemed to appreciate – perhaps because he knew that you didn't retain friends by boasting about your obscene wealth every five minutes.   
  
Dragging his feet with reluctance, Severus made his way up to the bar. This was the moment he couldn't put off any longer. He somehow had to slip the Amortentia into Malfoy's drink. And, after seeing the interior of the Hanged Man, Lucius Malfoy seemed like a terrifyingly well-protected figure. He was at the centre of a circle of wealth and privilege; he had access to incredibly rare books on mind magic, and the Dark Lord had made him one of his lieutenants. The idea that he wouldn't notice a rare potion being slipped into his drink was ludicrous.   
  
But he would never beat Potter if he wasn't prepared to take risks. It didn't matter that the risks were disproportionately huge, because so was his hatred. In a way, it didn't even matter if he was caught, so long as Narcissa still got the Dark Snitch into Potter's hands – so long as something agonizing and humiliating still happened to that grinning bastard.   
  
He had reached a stage of such advanced, deep-seated hatred that he was prepared to risk everything to hurt Potter. He would _open a vein_ to hurt Potter – just so that, for once in his spoilt, pampered, sickening life, Potter would know what it felt like to _lose_ something.  
  
The barman obligingly turned away – perhaps because eye-contact increased his tremblings – and Severus uncorked the potion bottle he'd been carrying in his pocket.   
  
He only needed a tiny amount. This stuff was more virulent than any poison. It was virulent before it even touched your lips – it could make your heart rise in your throat from ten feet away – because it smelled of everything you associated with love. Severus kept his hand determinedly steady as he breathed in the orange-spice scent of Lily's shampoo. It only made him more determined.    
  
He poured the contents of the bottle into Malfoy's butter-beer, and brought the tray of drinks back to the table. Malfoy was examining his own reflection in the polished silver knob on top of his cane. "When you see Narcissa," he said, picking up the glass and letting it hover casually by his lips, "tell her that it would never have worked."  
  
Snape knew how to suppress his anxiety. He'd been doing it since he was four years old. "Why wouldn't it have worked?" he asked calmly.    
  
Lucius - grave, dignified, serious Lucius - actually seemed agitated by this question. "She is too good for me," he said. "She needs somebody who will be hers to command."   
  
Snape raised his eyebrows. "No argument there. But I still don't see why that can't be you."  
  
"She believes in things," Lucius was tapping his cane on the table-top now, with an agitation that seemed a million miles from his usual calm, sneering persona. For the first time – and with a soaring but suppressed sense of relief – Severus realized how preoccupied Malfoy was. He seemed to be obsessed with Narcissa Black _already_.   
  
Actually, that probably wasn't good. He didn't know what the Amortentia would do to someone who was _already_ in love.   
  
"I do not wish to spoil her," Malfoy continued, in an approximation of a dignified voice. "She is innocent and idealistic."   
  
Snape was too much in awe of Malfoy to contradict him, even with a mistake as blatant as this one. It seemed that sleeping with her sister had been Malfoy's way of telling Narcissa that he admired her.    
  
"Well, she's young," he managed. "Everyone gets spoiled eventually."   
  
"No-one's going to spoil Narcissa Black if they don't want to be hung up by their entrails over a cage of ravenous werewolves," Lucius growled.  
  
Snape wasn't sure what to say to this, so he kept silent.   
  
"Just tell her it would never have worked," Lucius added irritably.    
  
"Shall I tell her the bit about the werewolves?"   
  
At first, Snape was afraid he'd gone too far, but then the familiar sneering smile lit up Malfoy's face, and he said. "I would not wish to spoil the surprise for her." He gave another dignified sniff and downed his butter-beer in one gulp. "Come back anytime you wish, Severus, day or night. The bar-tender is always awake."   
  
Snape smiled back, feeling slightly dizzy. He suspected that, by the same tortured logic which made Malfoy think that sleeping with Narcissa's sister was a compliment, Narcissa might think that feeding her prospective boyfriends to werewolves was a very romantic thing for Lucius to do.   
  
Still, he had drunk the Amortentia, so he was only going to get crazier from here. Severus was half-curious to see how the symptoms would manifest themselves, and half-desperate to be somewhere else when they did.   
  
He downed his own butter-beer – there had only been enough money for half a butter-beer, in any case – and told Lucius that he had to get back to school.


	11. Desconfianza

Narcissa didn't like having to play dumb. Still, it was sometimes necessary. Men needed to be convinced of their own superiority – or at least their own worth – before they would propose marriage. It was no good captivating a man with your charms if he was then going to moon about hopelessly, agonizing over the fact that you were too good for him. You had to tone down your own intelligence if you wanted to be thought of as a suitable prospective bride.   
  
Narcissa's ancestors had been wonderful at this. Her great-aunt Lavinia had successfully convinced her own husband for twenty years that she was an innocuous half-wit. He was probably still under that impression when he was lying on the living-room carpet, dying of arsenic poisoning. A nasty way to die, but not one which afforded you much capacity for rational thought.   
  
Narcissa had liberated the box containing the Dark Snitch from her family vault that morning. It had been buried under an altar, surrounded by ominous carvings about deadly curses and avenging angels. As a daughter of the House of Black, she naturally understood that these warnings didn't apply to her.   
  
And now she was standing in front of Madam Hooch's locker, listening to the sounds of male, moronic gooning from the Quidditch-changing-rooms next door, and wondering why Potter wouldn't hurry up and _discover_ her already.   
  
Severus was right about the intelligence-dampening effects of the boy's ego. It had been a good Quidditch practice. Narcissa had watched it from the stands – wondering all the time why the ability to zoom after a mechanical ball at high speeds was supposed to make you a worthier human being. Potter looked… well, _undignified_ , when he was zooming after those things. He looked like he was actually _trying_. His cheeks were red – his untidy hair was flapping about in all directions – he was making very unattractive faces, as though he was lifting dumb-bells or straining on the toilet – and still, his little fan-club of girls were down on the pitch, swooning at this formidable display of effort.   
  
Narcissa had never found effort attractive. She would have had incredibly low self-esteem if she did.   
  
So now Potter, validated by all that attention, was behaving very incautiously. She was sure she had slammed the door when she came into the Quidditch-rooms, but no-one – not even their little servant Pettigrew – had come out to investigate her presence. Perhaps it was time to forego the subtleties.   
  
She dropped the rosewood box onto the floor, watching it bring up clouds of dust, and cursed as loud as she could.   
  
Well, Potter might be over-confident, but he _was_ fast. He was standing in the doorway of the changing-rooms within a few seconds, leaning against the door-frame and looking smug.   
  
Narcissa managed to stare at him. It was all she could do not to sigh.   
  
"What are you up to, 'Cissy?" he asked, as Sirius, Lupin and Pettigrew poked their heads round the doorframe behind him.   
  
Narcissa flinched at the annoying nick-name, but didn't rise to it. "I…" she stammered. "I was… I was looking for Sirius."   
  
"Oh, yeah?" said Sirius, swaggering out of the changing rooms with fury in his eyes. He always got that look whenever he was confronted with reminders of his family. "What about? And what have you got there?" His eyes flicked down to the rosewood box which was lying, prone but fortunately not open, at her feet. "Wormtail, pick it up."   
  
Wormtail, his face shining with eager or apprehensive sweat, did as he was told. He passed it to Sirius, and Sirius turned it over in his hands. Narcissa waited until he had almost undone the clasp, and then hissed: " _Don't!_ "    
  
Sirius raised his eyebrows, and examined the front of the box in more detail.   
  
"Hey, I know what this is!" he said, turning triumphantly to Potter. "This is in our family vault. It's got the crest of Ulysses Santacruz on the lid."   
  
There was a shocked silence. Everyone, it seemed, had heard of Ulysses Santacruz, and his most treasured, never-possessed, possession.   
  
Narcissa saw them taking in her position by Madam Hooch's locker. Thank heavens she wouldn't have to do any more guilty stammering.   
  
"I reckon your cousin was trying to plant something nasty in Madam Hooch's locker, Padfoot," said Potter slowly. "Now why would a nice girl like her want to do a mean thing like that?"  
  
Narcissa simply raised her eyebrows. Now, she judged, would probably be the right time to find her courage. "You can't prove anything," she said. "I was here with one of _my family's_ possessions. It doesn't concern you, or any other blood-traitor who happens to be in your entourage."   
  
Sirius – never very good at suppressing his emotions – was beside her in two bounds, pinning her wrists up against the locker. Potter and Lupin were shouting his name, but Sirius ignored them.   
  
"You disgust me," he growled, pressing his face very close to hers. "You and everyone else in that in-bred asylum you call a home."   
  
"The feeling is more than mutual," she replied calmly.   
  
"Padfoot!" said Potter, louder this time. "Let her go. She's only a fifth-year! Regulus probably put her up to it."   
  
There was another growl from Sirius, but he released her, muttering incoherent threats that culminated in the sentence: "Maybe, one day, you Slytherin scum will find you've bitten off more than you can chew."   
  
" _We_ don't bite," said Narcissa, massaging the circulation back into her wrists. " _We're_ not animals."   
  
There was a silence. Potter and Sirius were looking at her with shocked – and then amused – faces. Gradually, the silence turned into laughter. "Well, you're missing out," said Sirius, between snorts. He picked up the rosewood box and dusted it off. "We won't tell Madam Hooch you've been here if you let us keep this box, huh? How's that for a deal, Princess?"   
  
Narcissa smoothed down the creases in her skirt and shrugged. "It's your funeral."   
  
  
It was half an hour later, and they still hadn't opened the box. They were all aware of how restrained they were being, and three of them were adament that this entitled them to some kind of Dark-Snitch-based reward.    
  
James, Sirius, Lupin and Pettigrew were sitting in front of the fire-place in the Gryffindor common-room. The rosewood box containing the Dark Snitch had been placed reverentially on the carpet, where it was juddering from time to time, and making Pettigrew jump.   
  
They clustered around and watched it. James and Sirius knew how to loll properly; they were both stretched out luxuriantly on the carpet. Pettigrew was standing up through sheer excitement, shifting his weight from foot to foot, but Lupin was sitting in an arm-chair, his back ramrod straight, his fingers tapping restlessly on the front cover of his library book. James could tell he was preparing to voice some kind of objection, or take some kind of stand, so he attempted to forestall it with his usual bright-eyed enthusiasm.   
  
"My dad told me about Ulysses Santacruz when I got my first broomstick," he said, into the reverential silence which had descended around the rosewood box. "He said no-one these days knows what he looks like, because, in every photograph of him, he's whizzing around like a bluebottle. I can't believe we found his snitch!"   
  
"People would be talking about it for ages," said Sirius thoughtfully. "There isn't a Quidditch team in the country who wouldn't sign you on the spot if you managed to catch the Dark Snitch."   
  
"I think it's dangerous," said Lupin at last, keeping his eyes fixed on the front cover of his library book. "It's called the _Dark_ Snitch, after all. Has it ever occurred to you that it could be dark magic?"    
  
Sirius rolled his eyes. "It's Quidditch, mate. Quidditch is _beyond_ good and evil."   
  
"You don't say that when the Slytherins cheat," said Lupin grimly. "What about the time Avery used that Severance Curse to split Boyd's broomstick in half down the middle, and the different pieces tried to go off in different directions, until he was doing the splits in mid-air fifty feet off the ground?"   
  
James and Sirius shared a sheepish look. If Boyd had been a Slytherin, they would have found that particular stunt hilarious. Since he was a Gryffindor, it was, of course, an outrage.   
  
Sirius was the first to speak. "Well, obviously, if you're a git, you can still get caught up in dark magic on the Quidditch pitch. But Prongs here _isn't_ a git." He patted James on the shoulder, and then added diplomatically: "Not the regular kind, anyway."   
  
"I don't think the Dark Snitch cares how good your intentions are," said Lupin. "The last time it was released, all the spectators had their memories wiped clear and were instantaneously transported to Paris."   
  
"Free holiday!" Sirius protested, with a wave of his arm.   
  
Lupin didn't respond. Automatically, all eyes swiveled in James's direction, as they usually did when there was an argument. Lupin and Pettigrew were too timid to be the final arbitrators, and Sirius – although no-one dared admit it – was too cruel. There would be no reconciliations if Sirius was in charge. The four Marauders would have stopped talking to each other long ago, if it hadn't been for James's diplomatic softness. So the final decisions were usually left to him. But it was immediately apparent that he wasn't going to be able to make this one impartially. He was staring at the rosewood box with longing in his eyes.   
  
"Listen, Moony – no, _listen_ ," he added, as Lupin's face fell. "You don't understand what a _find_ this is!"   
  
"It's dangerous."   
  
"That's what makes it fun!" James protested, laughing. "What's the matter," he went on, spreading his arms wide, "you think I'm not good enough to catch it? Is that it?"   
  
Lupin made a face that was half-frowning and half-amused. "Of course I don't think - ,"   
  
But James interrupted, bowled along by the momentum of his own enthusiasm. "You think I'd let anyone get hurt?"   
  
"I know you wouldn't _let_ \- ,"   
  
"Besides, full moon's _weeks_ away, and you know we'll only get into trouble if we don't have some excitement to look forward to."   
  
"Yeah, Moony," said Pettigrew, who felt safe joining in the argument, now that he knew no-one was going to back Lupin up.   
  
"And who knows," said Sirius, slapping James heartily on the back, "maybe if you caught the Dark Snitch, it might even cause that ice-queen Evans to thaw out a little bit."   
  
James coloured slightly, but said nothing. Sirius's voice was pretty loud to begin with, and it would only get louder if he argued. But nobody could have seemed further from an ice-queen to him.  Lily Evans was… well, she was like the opposite of Narcissa, with her tidy hair and china-white skin. Lily was all blushes and smiles and motion. She was all _alive_.   
  
Granted, she had strange moods sometimes. She and James were not exactly friends, but he had spent a lot of time watching her, and you'd have to be blind not to notice them. She became strangely withdrawn and insular at certain moments, as though all the loud Gryffindor colours and loud Gryffindor opinions hurt her ears, and she was desperately casting her eyes around for something _different_.   
  
But James wouldn't have liked her half so much if she'd been easy to figure out. Besides, for all her strangeness, there was something so familiar about her. She reminded him of his childhood somehow.     
  
The warm glow of her hair called to mind spices and red gold. In fact, her hair smelled of oranges and sweet spices: ginger, cinnamon and cloves – a scent that evoked both Christmas and warm, exotic lands - both comfort and excitement. Everything about her suggested adventure to James Potter – and adventure was irresistible to James Potter.   
  
His father had been a curse-breaker for Gringotts, and had once taken James to South America. The place had made an impression on him. He'd seen crumbling temples, choked with vines, brightly coloured macaws, strange new constellations in the sky at night. His father had shown him the horrible magical booby-traps that the South American wizards put in place to secure their fortunes. He'd told him stories about the Desconfianza curse, which struck you down with a fever, and in this fever, you experienced despair (James hadn't known what despair was, so his father had had to explain it): "you can't imagine a future for yourself, and it hurts to remember all the things you love, because they torment you by their absence, and by the certain knowledge that they'll always be absent from you, forever." (James had given a small shudder to hear his father being so serious).   
  
"The only way to counter this curse," George Potter had explained, "is to think about the good things, the things you love: just _them_ : not how you'll see them again, nothing like that, because reason isn't on your side; reason belongs to the fever. Just picture them in your mind's eye, just cling to them, even while the fever is telling you they're gone, useless, tainted, unreachable. And don't let go of them. It's not hope you need, just stubbornness."   
  
James had listened, wide-eyed. He had goose-bumps at the thought of his father being struck down by despair, being vulnerable. "What happened?" he breathed. "Did the curse lift?"   
  
"After three or four days of struggle," George said grimly. "But I wouldn't let go of you or your mother. And, as she would tell you, stubbornness is not something I'm short on."   
  
James had been struck by this. His father was strong and quick-witted and had never seemed to need anyone else. It was confusing to think that in a desperate situation he had been saved by the thought, just the _thought_ , of James and his mother.   
  
"You shouldn't be afraid of Dark Magic," George had said, "you should respect it; you should know what it can do; but fear is the principle under which these curses operate. That fever wanted me to feel alone, alienated, paralysed. Have you ever wondered why Dark Magic always involves grisly things like skulls, blood, shrunken heads, dead bodies? It's because these are the things that people fear. And fear is a powerful basis for magic. If you can govern your fear, I don't say you'll be immune to Dark Magic, but you'll be able to see it for what it is: you'll be able to see that it's vulnerable; that it, like everything else, has its weaknesses." At this point, George Potter had smiled slightly. "Mind, I don't say that confidence can't cloud your vision just as much as fear. But you'll learn, James, to govern one as well as the other. You're smarter than me, after all. Got your mother's logic."      
  
Some parts of this speech had made a stronger impression on James than others. He had wholeheartedly absorbed the notion that he was clever, that fear was not to be bothered with, that Dark Magic was disgusting, dishonourable trickery. But he had never been able to understand why confidence could make you just as vulnerable as fear. In fact, it would only be after he released Ulysses Santacruz's Dark Snitch that he would begin to understand _that_ part of his father's speech.    
  
Lily Evans reminded him of South America, but he couldn't immediately understand why. It was something more than the glow of adventure she inspired. It was something to do with his father's story about the Desconfianza fever. He couldn't understand it, so he continued to think of her jewel-bright hair and exotic scent as the explanation for the connection. If there was more, he would work it out eventually; he always did.    
  
  
  
Four floors below, in a store-room off the main Potions-dungeon, Severus Snape kneeled by the unlit hearth, listening to the echoes of loathsome Gryffindor voices as they petered out. After eavesdropping on Potter and his cronies this way, he always felt badly in need of a bath.     
  
The castle, though built of solid granite, with walls that could be five inches thick in places, was much more porous than its students realized. Any building with that many fireplaces needed a lot of ventilation. The entire place was honey-combed with chimney shafts and ventilation grilles. If you had intelligence, patience, and a lot of time on your hands – and, needless to say, Severus Snape had all three – you could work out, for example, which fireplaces shared a chimney-shaft with the fireplace in the Gryffindor common-room. Severus didn't have a magic map that showed him every floor of the castle, but he was incredibly good at visualizing structures in his head, and listening out for the tell-tale harmonics of his enemies' voices.   
  
Potter and his cronies always clustered round the fire, because those were the best seats. They probably sweated like pigs next to the roaring flames, but they would only sit in the best seats. It was a moronic matter of pride.   
  
And they never bothered to lower their voices. After all, they were _worshipped_ among their fellow Gryffindors. Who would dare to tell on them? Potter had won the House Cup for Gryffindor _four years running_.   
  
Besides, their inveterate hatred for Slytherins had given them the converse impression that everyone the Sorting Hat placed in Gryffindor must be a 'decent bloke'. They were going to be _ripped apart_ when they got out into the real world.   
  
But Severus couldn't wait that long.     
  
He spent so much time eavesdropping on them that many people would have been surprised to learn that he could go on hating them as much as he did. But he did.   
  
Every flash of thoughtfulness or consideration displayed by Potter towards his friends was just more proof of the bastard's hypocrisy. He would treat you with respect if you were a _Gryffindor_ – if you were prepared to worship him, flatter him, and let him have his own way.   
  
Or – and this was beginning to rattle him more and more – if you were a pretty girl.   
  
Potter only ever received insults from Lily Evans, but he still fawned on her. His bragging still got louder whenever she approached, and trailed off into sheepish mumblings when she walked away with her nose in the air.   
  
It would have been funny if it hadn't been Lily.   
  
But Potter always got what he wanted. Everyone knew that. How long could Lily go on refusing a rich pure-blood who was adored by the whole bloody school?   
  
Well, in a sense, that was the point of the Dark Snitch. Maybe the school wouldn't adore him so much if they knew how casually he was willing to put them all in danger. Or maybe – better still – he would get horribly disfigured, or driven out of what could charitably be called his wits through sheer terror.   
  
If there was any justice, it would be both.   
  
That had been the idea originally, but Severus had lost hold of the point somewhere along the way. He couldn't imagine any future after he'd taken his revenge on Potter. It was as though his entire life had been building up to this one do-or-die, all-resolving point, and whatever resulted from Potter's agony was just a footnote on the final page of history.   
  
And you couldn't avert it any more than you could hold back a tidal wave with your hands. The spring was wound up tight. Potter had been twisting it for six years, with his idle hexes and casual insults. It was going to uncoil itself. That was a physical inevitability. Every action had an equal and opposite reaction.   
  
In fact, it seemed so inevitable to Severus that he began to wonder why Dumbledore hadn't _planned_ for this.   
  
Perhaps he had. Perhaps there would be no vengeance tomorrow – just a grave, twinkly-eyed old man, tapping his fingers against the rosewood box which contained the Dark Snitch, looking disappointed.   
  
And that was the worst part of it. Dumbledore had been prejudiced against him from the moment he'd stepped off the Hogwarts Express six years ago; he had looked on indulgently while Severus was shoved, tripped, hexed and generally battered by the Gryffindors; and yet somehow, whenever Severus broke the rules to get even, he still contrived to look disappointed.   
  
No, that wasn't the worst part. The whole was much greater than the sum of its worst parts. It culminated in the moment when Severus walked out of Dumbledore's office, having received a punishment ten times more severe than the punishment James Potter received for the original act of malice that had incited all this, and _he felt guilty, because Dumbledore was disappointed in him_.   
  
Severus was good at blaming other people for his misfortunes, but there was really nothing he could do to avoid hating himself in moments like that. He was just as stupid with Dumbledore as he was with Lily Evans. He knew they both hated him – he knew they preferred loud, brash, arrogant idiots – and yet somehow, incredibly, he still wanted them on his side.   
  
What with all that, it was hard to see beyond tomorrow. It was painful to think of anything beyond the immediate present anyway. Severus's horizons had been narrowed by sheer hatred. Lily was lost to him forever. Both the future and the past were painful to contemplate. So, instead, he thought about Potter's pain. If there was to be no future, there could at least be _satisfaction_. It was the least the universe owed him.


	12. Flesh Wounds and Flesh Memories

That night – and not for the first time – James Potter dreamt about flying. He dreamt about clouds getting snagged on his toes and trailing after him like brambles. He dreamt about clear, forget-me-not-blue skies and sheer drops without fear. He woke up a few times, tingling with anticipation for the coming dawn, while Padfoot snored loudly in the next bed. He paced around for a while, deliberately creaking the floor-boards in the hope that one of his friends might wake up and provide him with some company, but they slumbered on, oblivious.   
  
James was never troubled with nerves before a Quidditch match – only impatience. He wanted to be up there in the sky, instead of having to come up with threatening taunts for the Slytherin Quidditch-team, or suffering the indignity of having people pat him on the back and assure him that he would be brilliant, as if there was some kind of _doubt_ in their minds.   
  
Tomorrow would be the adventure of a life-time, and he couldn't wait to get started. Dreamily, he ran possible team strategies and flying formations through his head. He would have to wear thick gloves, because he'd heard that the Dark Snitch released a paralyzing potion whenever someone touched it. It would have other defences too, so he'd tucked his Antidotes Kit – only seven Galleons from Quality Quidditch Supplies, "The perfect piece of kit for the magical adventurer on the go" – into the breast-pocket of the T-shirt he wore under his Quidditch robes. He'd be taking his wand too, of course. That went without saying. He didn't know how long he'd be gone, but he wasn't going to come back without the Dark Snitch.   
  
The day, when it finally dawned, turned out to be hot, muggy and overcast. There was something crackling and oppressive about the atmosphere. It was as though the clouds were gathering together, pooling their resources, in order to throw everything they'd got into the coming thunderstorm. James half-hoped it would break during the Quidditch match, for extra drama.   
  
He got through the rest of the morning on automatic, smiling and scowling at people based on the colour of their school-tie, and putting his Quidditch robes on back-to-front when he finally reached the changing-rooms. He probably would have walked onto the pitch like that, if it hadn't been for Boyd. Boyd was a third-year, hoping to become Quidditch Captain when James eventually left school, and consequently very keen that the team should be well-turned-out. Back-to-front robes, he said, would be unlikely to impress Dumbledore.   
  
James mumbled that he had _already_ impressed Dumbledore by winning four Quidditch Cups, and went back to change again.   
  
By the time he got onto the pitch, he was completely numb with excitement. He hadn't felt this way since his first match. The crowd was a nervous blur before his eyes – a writhing mass of shouts and colours. He held his breath as Madam Hooch, with her whistle between her lips, kicked open the box containing the Quidditch balls.   
  
It rose out of the open box, straight up, like a piece of debris from some earth-shattering explosion. A gasp emerged from the crowd at the same time – the familiar collective intake of breath before the whistle blew on a Hogwarts Quidditch-match – but it lagged hopelessly behind the Dark Snitch. Still, James felt it wash over his skin, raising goose-bumps along the way.   
  
The Snitch was lost to sight for a while – and _still_ Madam Hooch hadn't blown the whistle – but it flitted back down again, as though wondering why nobody had started the pursuit.   
  
It was beautiful, that was the first thing you noticed: made of black steel, with raven-feather wings, perfectly curved. Its wing-feathers lay sleek and straight and declared emphatically that they'd never been messed-up by human hands. It was remote and unconquered. James felt as though he was standing on the shores of a new world.  
  
It passed within three feet of his head, and he had to work hard to stifle a moan of longing. He couldn't start before the whistle blew, even though every muscle and nerve was straining against its moorings, desperate to begin the chase. The adrenaline had kicked in, as it always did at the start of a Quidditch match – blurring his vision for a second, before smoothing the world out into a panorama of bewitching clarity.   
  
When the whistle finally cut through the air, it sounded faint and far-away. But James didn't dwell on that. He was too busy leaping into the air, hardly caring if his broomstick was beneath him.   
  
His thoughts were rocketing through his head at speed; everything else seemed sluggish by comparison. He could discern every beat of his heart – every beat of the Snitch's wings – but, somehow – maddeningly – he couldn't get any closer to it, no matter how his thoughts raced and his body glided through the unresisting air.  
  
He started to lose all consciousness of the crowd below. Their gasping, cheering and jeering – which had once powered every loop and dive – was starting to drop back. Perhaps he was flying out of the Quidditch stadium. Or perhaps he had finally learned to tune out the irrelevant things in life. He couldn't believe he'd once cared about winning House Cups, or getting even with the Slytherins, or wondering who Lily Evans was currently dating. All of that was wonderfully distant now. The only thing that existed for him was the dark glittering of the snitch. It filled his whole field of vision – even though it was just a miniscule point on the horizon, getting no closer, but guiding his broom like the north-star, steering him back on course.   
  
After an indeterminate amount of time – it seemed like seconds, but it could have been hours, because time flew when you were having fun and it _rocketed_ when you were transfixed by the Dark Snitch – he saw it slowing down, dropping back, as though it wanted to make sure it still had his attention.  
  
Potter urged his broomstick forward and stretched out his hand. He could feel the manic black wings beating against his gloves. But, after three beats, he started to smell smoking leather and feel a brief, tingling coldness where his hand had been exposed to the air. After that, all feeling in his arm evaporated. He tried to tell his fingers to close around the Snitch – it was within his grasp, for God's sake! – but they wouldn't listen. His whole arm sagged and hung limply by his side. James felt it over-balancing the broom, and adjusted his trajectory to compensate.   
  
He'd forgotten about the paralyzing potion. Well, it was no problem. He could catch a Snitch left-handed any day. He'd even once had to catch one in his teeth, that time when a Bludger had broken his left arm, and he'd been holding Boyd off the ground with his right. Man, he'd been a hero in the Gryffindor common-room _that_ night!   
  
He followed the Snitch under the dark branches of the Forbidden Forest, gliding between the trees with split-second ease. Always, it remained just ahead of him – not so far that he couldn't dream of catching up, but getting no closer, no matter how he accelerated or flattened himself against the broom-handle.   
  
He chased it into a clearing, carpeted with grass spangled with little white flowers. James, who only had eyes for the Dark Snitch, was slightly disoriented to see unexpected colours in his peripheral vision – a kind of dark, distracting red, which looked out of place amidst all the black and brown. Even weirder, he could hear _humming_.   
  
For a sole, stupid moment, he took his eyes off the Dark Snitch. But a sole, stupid moment is all it takes in Quidditch, especially when your quarry has been souped-up with added magical powers.    
  
He saw a girl in the clearing, bending down to pick the white flowers, and then everything came to a shuddering halt. It didn't hurt, because the entire right-half of his body was numb by now, but he had the definite impression that it was going to hurt tomorrow, when the paralyzing potion wore off. He'd caught his helpless, limp right arm in a crook between two branches, and his broomstick had clattered to the ground – which was at least twenty feet away. James was hanging from the tree by a limb he couldn't even feel.   
  
And, to make matters worse, he realized, as his eyes searched desperately for the Dark Snitch, that the girl in the clearing was Lily.    
  
She hadn't noticed him. She was immersed in her flower-picking and her humming. Dimly, James realized that the white, star-shaped blooms in the clearing were Dittany flowers, and that she must have been harvesting the pods for healing potions. A stream of potion-statistics – relics of last year's intensive OWLS revision – streamed into his head, but he shook himself, trying desperately to relocate the Dark Snitch.   
  
It hadn't zoomed off. It was just hovering a few inches above Lily's shoulder, perhaps wondering why she wasn't gasping and trying to snatch it out of the air.   
  
Gently, it lowered itself onto her. For a few seconds, she didn't even seem to notice, and then she must have felt the stirring motion of its wings, because she turned her head very slowly, as though she was expecting to see something horrible climbing up her arm, and blinked in puzzlement.   
  
She looked around, obviously wondering if she had wandered into the midst of a Quidditch game, and that was when she saw Potter hanging, bloody and bruised, from the tree at the edge of the clearing. Her mouth formed itself into a perfect 'O'. Potter's mouth reciprocated, because he was looking at her left shoulder, where the Dark Snitch's paralyzing potion was burning away her school-shirt.   
  
For a moment, neither of them moved, and then, dreamily, as though he was doing nothing more extraordinary than untying his shoelaces, James cast a Severance Charm in order to cut his own arm off.   
  
And that was the last thing he knew.   
  
  
The Hospital Wing was bustling. There had been outbreaks of green fire in the stands of the Quidditch stadium. This, it turned out, was a paralyzing fire, which didn't burn but froze you, motionless, inside your own body. There were at least fifty people crammed into the beds in the Hospital Wing. Madam Pomfrey was in a terrible mood.   
  
"Unforgivably irresponsible!" she shouted, as she dabbed potions fiercely onto random student limbs.   
  
"Are you talking about me, or the students?" Dumbledore asked politely. He was sitting – very emphatically out of Madam Pomfrey's way – in an armchair which had been positioned outside the door to her office, reading a magazine.   
  
"Everybody!" she snapped. "You're not exempt from it, Dumbledore, believe me! When you get students this stupid, it's irresponsible to even let them out of the castle! You should keep them under lock and key, for their own safety!"   
  
"We don't know who replaced the snitch with Ulysses Santacruz's Dark Snitch," Dumbledore replied gently. "There may have been only one stupid student. Perhaps one who didn't even realize what he or she was doing. It would be unkind to keep them all locked up because of one student's mistake, Poppy."   
  
He gestured at the unconscious form in the bed nearest to him. "There, for example, is the delightful Margot Holloway, who has never cost Slytherin House so much as a point in her entire school career – who thinks the Death Eaters should carry out controlled scientific experiments before they make any rash pronouncements about superior and inferior blood-lines. Surely you can't be suggesting we should place _her_ in the same category of irresponsibility as a James Potter or a Sirius Black?"   
  
Madam Pomfrey dropped into a chair beside him, massaging her temples. "You are aware that we could be sitting here with fifty dead bodies, instead of fifty injured Quidditch-fans?"   
  
Dumbledore's smile faded. "I am aware we have been exceptionally fortunate, yes."   
  
" _Who's responsible_?"   
  
"I shall endeavor to find out."   
  
"You know what I think?"   
  
Dumbledore coughed delicately. "My dear Poppy, you're seldom shy about it."   
  
She ignored that. "I think Potter wanted to impress us all by catching the legendary Dark Snitch in front of a large audience."   
  
"I imagine that is what the rest of the school will think too."   
  
"They don't seem to mind much!" Madam Pomfrey exclaimed. "I caught six first-years trying to sneak in here earlier with a box of chocolate frogs for him! I mean, where does a first-year even get hold of a box of chocolate frogs at short notice? They're not allowed to visit Hogsmeade."   
  
Dumbledore put down the magazine and leaned closer. "You know, I'm not supposed to know about it, but there's a thriving trade in Honeydukes and Zonko-products within this school, and what it thrives on is the naivety of the younger students. Did you know that a first-year will pay up to a Galleon for a two-Sickle packet of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, just because it comes from Hogsmeade? I really must put a stop to it sometime – although, I confess, the logistics of such a mammoth operation are somewhat daunting."   
  
Madam Pomfrey's irritable attention had wandered back to Potter. "He was extremely lucky he didn't succeed in cutting his arm off, you know," she mused. "If Lily hadn't Stunned him when she did…"   
  
"I know."   
  
"Another second and she wouldn't have been able to! The paralyzing potion would have prevented her."   
  
"I know."   
  
"And I expect she had second thoughts about saving him in the first place!"  
  
"Second thoughts in the first place?" Dumbledore enquired politely.   
  
"You know what I mean."   
  
"My dear Poppy, if you are trying to extract compliments from me, you shall not find me wanting. Your protégée acted commendably, and I intend to tell her so as soon as she comes round."  
  
Madam Pomfrey, slightly mollified, lapsed into silence, while Dumbledore glanced around the room.  "I see you have yielded to the temptation of separating the injured Gryffindors from the injured Slytherins," he observed.   
  
Madam Pomfrey smiled sweetly. "It's my job to preserve their health, Dumbledore; it's _your_ job to educate them."   
  
Dumbledore chuckled. It wasn't the first time Madam Pomfrey had been led to suspect that he enjoyed being insulted.   
  
  
Severus loitered in the anteroom outside the Hospital Wing. He had been loitering there for most of the afternoon, standing, seething and unseen, in the shadows, while hysterical visitors rushed to pay tribute to their dim-witted hero and were shooed away by an irate Madam Pomfrey.   
  
If only he'd been too miserable to think! But Severus was never too miserable to think. Misery and thought went hand in hand for him, and the one would always encourage the other.   
  
It had been satisfying, in a surreal way, to see Potter brought in on a stretcher, covered in blood. It had been tantalizing to hear the whispers of the crowd outside the Hospital Wing, while they swapped rumours and reports. Was their beloved Potter responsible for all this chaos? Had he put everyone in danger just to boost his own ego? Had he really been unable to catch the Dark Snitch?   
  
Severus felt as though satisfaction had been circling him from above like a carrion-bird, waiting for its moment to descend. But the moment had never come. Satisfaction hadn't just been chased away - it had been shot out of the sky with a violent squawk, because Lily had been brought in on the next stretcher, looking pale and startlingly still.  
  
The whisperers said the Snitch had actually _landed_ on her. They said Dumbledore was worried she'd been corrupted by dark magic. Some of them even said it stood to reason that, as a muggle-born, she would have a lower resistance to dark magic than everyone else.   
  
Severus knew better than to give any credence to what they said. Unfortunately, his own informed speculations were even more alarming, and there was no way to shut them out. The Dark Snitch was a very… _unpredictable_ object. Only one person had ever touched it before, and he'd died immediately afterwards. Granted, he'd been riddled with arrows at the time, so death couldn't have been very far off, but that was even worse. Everyone knew you should keep dying people away from powerfully magical objects. Their last breath was so often a curse, and the kinds of curses that cost the caster his last ounce of strength were _potent_.   
  
On top of everything else, after a few hours, when it became apparent that nobody was going to die, the whispers started to take on an altogether more jovial quality.   
  
What a character that Potter was! He'd try _anything_! Bringing Ulyssez Santacruz's Dark Snitch into a school Quidditch game! People would be talking about this one for years! He deserved a medal just for the _cheek_ of it!   
  
Worse than that, they started to hope that he would make a full recovery before the next Quidditch match of the term. It was _his fault_ , and they were still concerned for him! He had put them all in danger, and they were queuing up outside the Hospital Wing to pat him on the back!   
  
Not Lily, though. That was something. She was sitting up in her bed in the Hospital Wing, hiding her face behind a copy of Witch Weekly, or pretending to be asleep, whenever Potter glanced over at her.   
  
And he was sickened by the way he clung to that – by the way the world would offer him pitiful consolations and _he would accept them_.   
  
Severus didn't understand it. The more Potter tried to get away with, the more they loved him. They more trouble he got into, the more they trusted him.   
  
His one, dim, final hope was that Dumbledore would come to his senses and expel the bastard, but there didn't seem to be much likelihood of that. Dumbledore loved Potter, and what he did. It was as though he thought that a certain amount of bullying and chaos added _character_ to a school.   
  
Severus felt as though the universe was persecuting him. It wasn't even that the world was meaningless, chaotic and unfair. He hadn't been without an inkling of _that_. It was that the powers of the world seemed to be allied against him, bent on his destruction, on a level so fundamental that they didn't even _realize_ it.   
  
If the world was just indifferent, he could have endured it: but the world was actively hostile. And, in a situation like that, turn-about was fair play. He had to learn how to fight back, how to rely on himself, since no-one else could be relied upon.   
  
The world had already made up its mind about James Potter. And he was beginning to realize – in a slow, creeping sickening way – that it had also made up its mind about Severus Snape. It didn't matter what he tried to do, or how he tried to do it. He would always be the bad guy. Somehow, without meaning to, he'd acquired all the narrative trappings of a villain. He skulked around in the shadows. He was pale, isolated and ugly. He would always end up hurting, disgusting and alienating Lily, because she and the rest of the world had decided that they were on different sides. There was no way across that divide, not while Potter and Dumbledore were still living.   
  
He felt so abandoned that it went beyond anger. He felt as though he was staring uncomprehendingly into the void, and it wasn't even bothering to stare back, because it, too, had dismissed him as a greasy-haired lurker.    
  
He wondered how many dark wizards had been here before him, on this lonely precipice of logic, realizing that the world was against them, and that the only way to lead a full, independent life was to turn against the world. Had even the Dark Lord been here? Handsome, brilliant, popular Tom Riddle? The world hadn't been shy about handing him gifts, but it had never handed him Dumbledore's approval. And, without that, you were the bad guy. You might as well accept it. Roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty, because there was no going back.   
  
  
"How are you feeling, Lily?"   
  
"Alright," said Lily cautiously, lowering her copy of Witch Weekly. She _didn't_ feel alright, of course, but she had been feeling un-alright for months, so it was probably irrelevant to the present discussion. Besides, Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey were looking so anxious. She felt duty-bound to soothe their anxieties, even with lies. "Why?" she went on, brushing her hair back. "What _was_ that thing?"   
  
Dumbledore steepled his fingers and peered at her pensively over the top of them. "How much do you know about the history of Quidditch, Lily?"   
  
"Nothing, sir."   
  
Madam Pomfrey grunted approvingly. "That's what I like to see in a Healer," she muttered.   
  
Lily, despite her worries, had to work hard to suppress a smile here. She liked Madam Pomfrey. The matron was brusque, touchy and constantly annoyed, but Lily had learned to love that kind of disposition when she'd first got to know Severus. In fact, she had been seeking out Madam Pomfrey's company more and more in the months since her argument with Severus. She loved Meg and Mary to bits, of course, but they were so… _noisy_. They always displayed and never watched, always exclaimed and never _listened_. In a world without Severus, Madam Pomfrey's office was the only place where Lily could find quiet, and words of more than two syllables.   
  
Lily stiffened, hating herself for that last thought and wondering where it could have come from. Restlessly, she turned her eyes to the place where the Snitch had landed, on her left shoulder. There was no mark – no bruise, scratch or burn – and the tingling was probably only to be expected. In the aftermath of the paralyzing potion, her whole body had been tingling, as feeling crept reluctantly back to her, reminding her of things like hunger, thirst, the stomach-cramps she was getting with her period, and the nagging sting of isolation she'd been nursing for the past few months. It stood to reason that the part of her body which had actually been _touched_ by the Snitch would be the last to lose the tingling sensation.   
  
Dumbledore gave her a reassuring smile. "The Snitch that landed on your shoulder was one engineered by a very famous, very talented Quidditch player one hundred and thirty years ago. His name was Ulyssez Santacruz. He gave the snitch quite brilliant magical defences, such as the paralyzing potion which immobilized you, and the green fire which has hospitalized a large proportion of our students. He hoped it would present him with a challenge worthy of his extraordinary talents. The pursuit of it consumed fifty years of his life, and resulted in his death, so I suppose, in a very extreme fashion, his hopes were fulfilled."   
  
"He never caught it?" said Lily. Madam Pomfrey had been fussing over her while Dumbledore spoke. She now took advantage of his silence to grab Lily's chin and demand that she say 'aaaah'.   
  
"No, he never caught it, in the conventional sense, but I believe it came back to him as he lay dying and settled on his shoulder."   
  
Lily, her mouth still open, stared at him. "Why did it do that?"   
  
"Perhaps, over the years, it had developed some form of relationship with him."   
  
"But Snitches aren't…" she hesitated, while Madam Pomfrey grabbed her wrist and took her pulse. "They're not… conscious?"   
  
"This one was an extraordinary feat of magical engineering, Lily. It may have acquired more of Ulysses Santacruz's personality than even _he_ realized. The point is that, to my knowledge, you and he are the only ones to have touched the Snitch and, since he died immediately afterwards, we were in no position to question _him_ about its effects."   
  
"Well, what kind of effects are you expecting?"   
  
Madam Pomfrey let go of Lily's wrist with a satisfied tut. "I can't see any obvious signs of corruption, Dumbledore."   
  
" _Corruption_?" Lily repeated in alarm.   
  
Dumbledore shrugged cheerfully. "It's just a word, my dear Lily."   
  
"Yes, but it's just a word for something you think I might have!" she protested. "Can't you even tell me what you're looking for?"   
  
"I don't think that would be a good idea, do you?" said Madam Pomfrey briskly, sticking a thermometer in Lily's mouth. "Besides, you're well-acquainted with the library's section on healing magic, Lily, you're quite capable of finding out on your own."   
  
"We don't know very much ourselves, Lily," Dumbledore explained gently. "And, in cases like these, symptoms tend to turn up as soon as the patient knows they're a possibility."   
  
Lily folded her arms and tried to sound disdainful, which is hard to do with a thermometer in your mouth. "You mean you think I'll start imagining things?"   
  
"Nobody's immune to it," Madam Pomfrey cut in, grabbing the thermometer and shaking it impatiently.   
  
"Something that absorbed its maker's personality, and can produce green fire and paralyzing potion," Lily murmured uneasily, "it sounds a lot like... well, like _dark_ magic."  
  
Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey exchanged a glance. Madam Pomfrey was the first to speak. "And if it _was_ , Lily Evans?" she demanded sharply. "What's that to you? Dark Magic can only influence you if you _let_ it. Poison goes where poison's welcome, and it should never be welcome in a Healer's mind."   
  
Dumbledore interrupted her, in soothing, diplomatic tones. "Poppy is trying to say that we think you're more or less immune to corrupting influences, Lily. I assure you, she means it as a compliment."   
  
Lily gave an embarrassed shrug and nodded. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I know."    
  
They walked off to tend to the other students, and Lily had to bury her face behind her copy of Witch Weekly again, because Potter was seeking out her eyes with a kind of determined wretchedness. She did _not_ want to hear any thankyous or apologies just now. And, most of all, she didn't want to hear anything more about _Quidditch_.   
  
There was a tangle of anxiety in her mind, and she couldn't unknot it, or work out which thread had come from which source. Somehow, the touch of the Dark Snitch was mixed up in her head with her growing loneliness, with the way she missed Severus, with her worries about what he was going to do without her.   
  
And, god, why did she _care_? He'd made it abundantly clear that he didn't care about her – or that he would only care about her when nobody was _watching_. Why couldn't she lose this fear, or reason it away? Why couldn't she shake him off? They had nothing in common, did they? They had always disagreed on everything, hadn't they? Why did she feel as though he'd walked away with a sizeable chunk of her soul?   
  
  
Sirius came to visit James after dinner, when Madam Pomfrey was finally letting visitors into the Hospital Wing. She couldn't forgo the urge to glare at him suspiciously, but, compared with her attitude earlier in the day, that was practically friendly.   
  
Most of the other students had been allowed to go back to their Common-rooms by then, and, to Potter's combined annoyance and relief, Lily had been amongst them. He didn't like the way he couldn't control himself around her; it was a terrifying echo of the way he hadn't been able to control himself earlier in the day.   
  
"They say I tried to cut my own arm off, Padfoot," he whispered hoarsely, as soon as Sirius was settled into the chair next to his bed, leaning back casually with his arms behind his head.   
  
"So?" said Sirius. "It's not like _that's_ anything new. Let's face it, Prongs, you would have cut your arm off for the House Cup last year. And for the Quidditch World Cup, you'd probably chop off something a lot closer to home."  
  
James blushed. "I would _not_!" he protested.   
  
"Ah," said Sirius, nodding sagely. "Of course. No point winning the Quidditch World Cup if you then can't enjoy the girls you'd get as a result of it. Clever."    
  
"Shut up, Padfoot!" said James, glancing around to make sure Lily hadn't come back and overheard this. "I'm being serious! I can hardly remember anything! Dumbledore said if Evans hadn't stunned me, I'd still be zooming around after that thing, with only one arm, trailing blood all over the countryside!"   
  
Sirius grimaced. "Lovely. I suppose he's still a bit annoyed with you. Did you tell him it was you who swapped the Snitches?"   
  
"I _had_ to. People could have got killed."   
  
"Yeah," sighed Sirius, leaning back in his chair. "I told him I got the Snitch out of my family vault. No sense in getting the little Princess into trouble. I've got about a month's worth of detentions, but they're with Hagrid, so I don't really care. What about you?"   
  
"Same," said James, with a feeble shrug. He was feeling unaccountably sorry for himself, despite the fact that he was clearly lucky not to have been expelled.   
  
"You really can't remember anything?" Padfoot went on.   
  
James made a face. "I can remember what the Dark Snitch looked like. And I can remember it settling on Evans's shoulder and burning away her school-shirt."   
  
"Would've been a crying shame if you'd forgotten _that_."   
  
James twisted his fingers wretchedly. "Think it'll have any effect on her?"   
  
"It might turn her into less of a bitch."   
  
James blushed again. "Shut up, Padfoot! She saved my _life_ , Dumbledore said."   
  
"It's not personal," said Sirius, chuckling. "She wants to be a Healer. She probably thought it would get her a placement at St. Mungo's when she leaves school. They're bloody hard to come by, you know."    
  
"I don't care why she did it," said James churlishly.   
  
But that wasn't true. He'd been hoping all afternoon that she'd done it because she'd changed her mind about him. He'd even been telling himself that she was so anxious to avoid eye-contact with him because desire had turned her suddenly shy. The hopes expired every time he thought about what had actually _happened_ , though. He couldn't have looked very impressive when he was hanging from a tree, trying to hack his arm off. A girl of a more sensitive disposition would probably vomit every time she looked at him.   
  
He hadn't been being entirely truthful when he'd told Sirius he hardly remembered anything. He remembered the Dark Snitch with such bewitchingly clarity that he was sure it would be turning up in daydreams and nightmares for years to come. It made him ache with hunger and humiliation whenever he thought about it.   
  
And, somehow, Lily was caught up in all that now. Snitches worked by flesh memories. But, by settling on her shoulder, _it_ had imprinted itself on _her_ , not her on it. She became invested with all the desperate mystique of the Dark Snitch. She became something he had to catch, at all costs.   
  
"There you go again," sighed Sirius, as though reading his mind, "going after something just because you can't have it."  
  
"She's not a 'thing'," he said peevishly.    
  
"What would you do if she turned around and said: 'James, I've had the hots for you since first-year. Let's go for it, right here, right now'."   
  
James stared into space for a while. "Is that a trick question?"   
  
"I'm _saying_ you wouldn't like her if she liked you. Just like you wouldn't bother catching a Snitch if it zoomed straight into your hands."   
  
"It would be hard _not_ to catch a snitch if it zoomed straight into my hands," he pointed out. "And, also, you're wrong. I don't enjoy getting rejected, you know. I'm not mental."   
  
"You enjoy getting pelted by bludgers."   
  
"Wrong again!" James protested. "Just because the challenges make you appreciate the prize even more doesn't mean the prize wouldn't be worth anything without the challenges!"   
  
"Doesn't it?"   
  
"No! She's…" he floundered, reddening. "Well, you wouldn't get it."   
  
"Why not?"   
  
"Because you don't have a heart, remember? We established that last Christmas when we went to that muggle cinema to watch 'Love Story', and you spent the whole time laughing."  
  
"Oh yeah," said Sirius, scratching his head. "I'd forgotten about that. Was that supposed to be sad?"  
  
"Ask Wormtail," said James rebelliously. "He was in floods of tears, and you laughed at _that_ too."     
  
Sirius barked with laughter. "Well, don't worry, Prongs. You're further ahead than you were last year. At least now you know she doesn't actually want you dead. And," he added, nodding meaningfully at James's bandaged arm, "chicks love a scar, especially the Healer chicks."   
  
  
Even after Lily went back to the Gryffindor common-room, Snape had stayed in the ante-room outside the Hospital Wing, staring out of the unglazed window, watching the moon gilding the tops of the fir trees in the Forbidden forest. He told himself he was waiting around to see Potter expelled, but he knew it would never happen. Was he waiting for some modicum of justice to emerge out of this hellish situation? He would be waiting a bloody long time.   
  
There was a delicate cough behind him, and he turned, expecting some fresh torment – maybe Narcissa, demanding to know why Malfoy had not yet arrived at the castle and thrown himself at her feet – or Bellatrix, come to give him what she thought of as a friendly punch on the arm for nearly getting one of Potter's limbs amputated.  
  
But it was only Dumbledore. The fact that Severus didn't immediately recognize this new visitor as a torment was something he was going to rebuke himself for later.   
  
"Shouldn't you be in your common-room, Severus?" he asked gently.   
  
Snape shrugged wordlessly. He wasn't going to give Dumbledore the satisfaction of acting as though he'd been caught out in some way. After all, Sirius Black was out of his common-room, and Dumbledore wasn't breathing disapprovingly down _his_ neck.   
  
"It has been an exciting day, has it not?" Dumbledore went on, joining him by the window, and looking out over the Forbidden Forest.   
  
"Yeah, very exciting," said Snape darkly. "Fifty students nearly dead and Potter not even expelled for it."   
  
Dumbledore's lips curled into a mischievous smile. "If there was definitive evidence that he was behind it - ,"   
  
"If there _was_ , you'd hush it up!" Snape shouted. "Like you hushed it up when they tried to _kill_ me!"   
  
"You were not entirely innocent yourself in that instance."   
  
"Was I guilty enough to be disemboweled by a werewolf, Dumbledore?"   
  
Dumbledore's eyes were sparkling. He seemed to be enjoying himself. "I am happy to say that, _then as now_ , nobody has died."   
  
"I see," said Severus. "So you only get expelled for murder? _Attempted_ murder is just a slap on the wrist?"   
  
Dumbledore smiled. "Let me endeavour to explain my reasoning to you, Severus. In cases where a little bit of guilt is widely dispersed amongst the student body, I think it best to simply let things be. If I were to expel everyone who was involved in this incident, I would be down at least six excellent students. Therefore, I propose to give everyone a second chance. You can call that favouritism if you like. I prefer to see it as _keeping this castle inhabited_."   
  
He doesn't know anything, Severus told himself, as he glared determinedly back. He's just trying to rattle you. There's no way he could _know_.   
  
But he always suspects the Slytherins, doesn't he? Especially when he can't stand to think that his precious Potter might be to blame.   
  
"I don't understand," he said, trying to keep his voice even. "Hasn't Potter _admitted_ that he switched the Snitches? Didn't Sirius Black _admit_ that he got the Dark Snitch out of his family vault? What kind of definitive evidence are you looking for?"   
  
Dumbledore tapped his long fingers on the window-ledge. "It's a small matter, but I happen to know that the locks on the Black family vault were changed when Sirius ran away from his family home. I am not _supposed_ to know this, so it's very hard for me to confront Sirius with the fact." He turned to Severus, his eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. "And there are other oddities, Severus – things which may be completely unconnected but which should nevertheless give one pause for thought. The theft of some extremely rare ingredients from Professor Slughorn's store-cupboard – ingredients which, he tells me, could be used to make up a cauldron-full of Amortentia. The mysterious indisposition of a friend you went drinking with at the weekend."   
  
"What?" said Snape, his mouth dry.   
  
"Didn't you know Mr. Malfoy was ill?"   
  
"No! What's wrong with him?"   
  
"Nobody can tell. He has barred all doctors from his presence. Another possibly unrelated but potentially thought-provoking fact is that you received an owl half an hour ago." Dumbledore passed him a sealed piece of parchment. "Forgive the idle curiosity, but the crest on the seal is the Malfoy coat of arms, is it not? It seems Mr. Malfoy feels that nobody but you is qualified to be his physician."  
  
Snape set his jaw and took the letter with determinedly steady hands. "For someone who won't expel Potter for a crime he's _admitted_ to, you're strangely eager to leap to conclusions without proof," he said calmly. "Would that have anything to do with the fact that I'm a Slytherin, sir?"   
  
Dumbledore chuckled. He seemed delighted by the cold, composed rebuke.   
  
"Professor Slughorn tells me your recent project on antidotes was exemplary," he said, in a lighter tone of voice. "You are a credit to the school, Severus. I am unspeakably glad to have you here."   
  
He turned and made a typically Dumbledorean exit, complete with trailing robes and bouncy walk. Severus stared resentfully after him.


	13. Blue Satin

It was the first bright day of spring. Little furrows of wispy white cloud criss-crossed the pale blue sky, and the smell of wood smoke and petrol fumes mingled under the rooftops of Diagon Alley. Larks looped and threaded their way across this hazy scene.     
  
Equally graceful, but much more dignified, was the girl who walked down the cobble-stoned street beneath them. She sauntered down the steps of Gringotts bank, and glided round the corner into Diagon Alley. Once there, she paused at the window of a jeweller's shop, ostensibly to admire a jewelled dragonfly broche, but her grey eyes soon wandered up to her own reflection, so dazzling in the sunlight that she could still see it when she closed her eyes.   
  
She stared at the window, until she recognized another figure reflected in the glass. He was standing some twenty yards behind her, pretending to examine the window display in Quality Quidditch Supplies. He had been following her all morning.      
  
Narcissa Black was feeling exuberant. This was unusual; her feelings seldom wandered above the level of satisfaction or contentment, because joy was undignified, but today her seemingly-effortless composure was strained. The spring had infected her with a feeling of reckless excitement- she was as close to buoyancy as a girl of her natural laziness could get.   
  
In this state, all kinds of schemes occurred to her. And her favourite topic on which to scheme was husbands.   
  
She had chosen the right one - the best one - but he was wilful and stubborn. She had neglected to show him who was boss.  
  
After all, men could not be allowed to do whatever they wanted, or civilization would collapse. Narcissa had seen her female ancestors stand behind their husbands and sons, pulling strings, persuading, advising, suggesting, controlling, and she assumed that this was what had always happened. Women stood behind powerful men and stopped them from making fools of themselves. Men had the power, but not the sense to make anything of it.  
  
There was no question in her mind that Lucius Malfoy was the best pure-blood wizard for her to marry - he seemed certain, when he had finished tampering with foolish pleasures and hopeless causes, to go into politics. His family was ancient and almost uncorrupted (there had been a Squib cousin in the 1940s, but nobody ever talked about him).   
  
Narcissa didn't want a husband; she wanted a _dynasty_. There were other ways to get power, but this was the least obtrusive. This was what her ancestors had done, and Narcissa worshipped her clever female ancestors; it was a religion that neatly combined her twin passions of snobbery and narcissism.      
  
From the jeweller's, she made her way up the cobbled street, which was overhung with beamed houses, leaning crookedly to one side or sagging under the weight of centuries. Adhesive charms were the only things keeping these familiar piles of stones together.   
  
Her stalker - a man wearing a dark, hodded robe, which rendered him bizarrely conspicuous in the heavy sunlight - stopped at the jeweller's window to see what she had been looking at. Narcissa slowed her pace a little; she didn't want to disappoint him. When she was confident that he had her in his sights, she stepped into the cool, shady interior of the dress shop.   
  
Its windows were shrouded with elaborate curtains - curtains of stolid velvet, sun-bleached to a soupy grey colour, embroidered with unrecognizable designs, and with heavy tassels that drooped languidly onto the carpet.    
  
Sunlight was peeping through a few chinks, but the curtains were fighting valiantly, as they had done for centuries, to preserve a dignified shade.   
  
Narcissa breathed in the beloved, dusty smell and relished the sudden coolness. She was trying to control the waves of exultation that were crashing over her.   
  
A bell tinkled from a back room behind the counter, and Mr Buntz stepped out.      
  
"Ah, Miss Black!"  
  
"Good morning, Peleus," said Narcissa, with haughty civility. "I would like you to make me a dress."   
  
Peleus Buntz was short and plump. He had a bald head but a sprawling and magnificent moustache, which cast most of his little body into shadow and twitched with enthusiasm whenever he spoke.   
  
When Narcissa Black came into his shop, it positively swayed, like a tree that has been cut down and is only just beginning to realize it. In his experience, she was the perfect customer: she had an unlimited budget, everything looked good on her, and she didn't take up much material.   
  
Peleus Buntz was an artist-turned-businessman. He hadn't wanted to be a tailor, but bitter experience had taught him to be practical. As a young man, he'd dreamed of painting and sculpting, but the wizarding world didn't have much use for art - magic could supply its place. And, in any case, his girlfriend became pregnant. Peleus needed money, fast, and his eye for detail, his capacity for dreaming, his dedication to the idea of beauty, served him well as a tailor - after all, when people came into his shop, he was creating them afresh. He was sculpting his customers in the image of perfection. He didn't always have the best raw materials to work with, which was why he liked Narcissa Black so much. With her, his work had already been half-done for him. She was the perfect canvas.            
  
Narcissa watched as he unrolled lengths of purple satin, black lace, and plump, sumptuous crimson velvet, for her inspection.     
  
"Too heavy," she murmured, almost to herself.   
  
"Absolutely, madam!" Peleus enthused. "You need cloth as delicate as gossamer to off-set those exquisite features."   
  
Narcissa was used to compliments. They rolled right off her back. She hesitated next to a duck-egg blue sheet of satin; it looked pale and promising, like the first blue sky of Spring.  
  
"I think I will have a dress for the Spring, Peleus," she murmured. "A dress that speaks of new beginnings."   
  
Peleus Buntz was looking at her with his mouth slightly open. Not only did he have a commission that practically amounted to a landscape painting, but blue satin was expensive.    
  
"Madam!" was all he could manage to say.  
  
The bell tinkled again, and Peleus turned to see a man with a pale, pointed face stepping out from under a heavy black cloak. He was gleaming with sweat; Peleus drew the sheet of satin towards him protectively.       
  
"Can I help you, Sir?" he asked, the rapturous note suddenly gone from his voice.   
  
The sweating man seemed to be having trouble articulating himself. Peleus was just considering calling the security troll, when Narcissa spoke. She had been enjoying the man's discomfort immensely, but she had to temper her enjoyment, or she might never feel enjoyment again.     
  
"Why, Mr Malfoy, whatever are you doing here?" she asked, in a voice that was both keen and bored.   
  
Malfoy leapt at the lifeline gratefully. "I saw you come in, and I thought I would take the opportunity to enquire after your family, Miss Black."  
  
"How kind of you," Narcissa replied, still in the same high, artificial voice that indicated her thoughts were elsewhere. "They're all very well, thank you, especially my sister Bellatrix."   
  
Another uncomfortable silence. Narcissa let it spiral into the realms of the unendurable before she broke it.   
  
"Mr Malfoy, may I introduce Peleus Buntz to you? He's the finest tailor in Diagon Alley."    
  
Peleus, on hearing the name Malfoy, had hitched his moustache up into a welcoming smile.    
  
"So sorry that I didn't recognize you, Mr Malfoy. Of course, I see it now from your noble profile. I fitted your father with his burial robes, you know."  
  
For the first time, Lucius Malfoy took his eyes off Narcissa. He gave Peleus Buntz a haughty stare, but Peleus was caught up in the moment and ignored it.   
  
"Yes, such a fine bone-structure! He was so gaunt and impressive at the funeral that several of his students - for you know, Miss Black, he was a highly respected teacher at Hogwarts - came down with fainting spells and nervous twitches! An awe-inspiring man, Miss Black! I only wish I had seen him when he was alive."   
  
"Yes," Malfoy cut in, "we all miss him dreadfully."   
  
This was a slight overstatement. Lucius Malfoy's initial reaction on hearing of his father's death had been to conjure a bottle of Firewhisky and call for a fresh wench. He was, however, a different man now.   
  
"I'm just fitting a dress for the charming Miss Black," said Peleus. "Please take a seat, Mr Malfoy, and I will attend to you as soon as I can."  
  
"Perhaps Mr Malfoy would like to give his opinion on the dress?" Narcissa suggested.   
  
Peleus scowled slightly; he had hoped to be alone with his canvas, but his business instincts prevailed.   
  
"Of course, by all means, only too delighted. What a fortuitous coincidence!"   
  
Peleus lead them into a back room, where an older pair of curtains were losing their battle with the sunlight, which was streaming heedlessly onto the carpet, making the place look garish and untidy.     
  
Narcissa stood on a stool while Peleus Buntz pinned the blue satin around her.   
  
Lucius Malfoy stalked about uncomfortably, alternately clearing his throat and lapsing into a preoccupied silence, in which he forgot to breath, and covered his sudden choking with another round of throat-clearing.     
  
He was staring at Narcissa. She was basking in the sunlight, wincing slightly in its glare - so fresh and delicate; he would not have been surprised to see her beaded and shimmering with dew.   
  
Malfoy stopped mid-pace and stood, blinking stupidly, watching the sunlight filter through her feathery, ice-white hair. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, like a fish struggling on the river-bank, but said nothing.   
  
Narcissa had the good sense to pretend not to notice. She suggested a cowl neck for the dress, and a pair of long white gloves, to which Buntz responded with rapturous noises of approval.   
  
One part of Narcissa's mind was already busy with the spells she could use to accessorize this dress - a subtle Luxus Charm to make her skin glow, a dab of dragon's blood to soften her lips. Dragon's blood felt hot and tingly - it caused the blood to rise to the surface, making lips red, full and sensitive. These agreeable feelings of heat and sensitivity could also be transferred to the lips of anyone that she kissed.   
  
Narcissa was a scientist. She never stopped thinking about cause and effect.  
  
When Peleus went to help her off the stool, he was elbowed in the ribs by Mr Malfoy, who extended his hand to her instead.   
  
Peleus knew enough of Malfoy's father's reputation to believe that he had got off lightly. They were a sadistic family, but their fine bone structure excused them, as far as Peleus was concerned.   
  
"That will be thirty Galleons, madam," he said, with an apologetic cough, as though he was sorry to be talking about something so indelicate to this fragile ice-sculpture of a woman.    
  
"Let me," said Lucius Malfoy, suddenly coming to his senses.   
  
Narcissa acquiesced with a raised eyebrow. She was too ladylike to protest.   
  
"It's nothing to me," Lucius went on, fumbling with a leather pouch of gold Galleons, and dropping a few as he spoke. "I have inherited a vast fortune."   
  
"A fortune is such a vulgar thing to have," Narcissa replied. "Money stinks of muggles, don't you think?"  
  
Malfoy looked stricken. "Then I shall give it all away," he said   
  
She smiled. "Yes. You might do that."  
  
"May I walk you back to the Leaky Cauldron?"   
  
"How did you know I was staying there?" she asked lightly, examining her nails.   
  
Another silence. Severus had not told her that the love potion would diminish Malfoy's intelligence so much. She hoped this wouldn't hinder his political career; the ability to lie swiftly was a necessity for that.   
  
"Very well," she said, "my House Elf is busy at the Apothecary's - I wonder, could you carry these for me?" She pointed to the neatly-wrapped packages and boxes, wrapped in scented tissue paper or tied with gilded ribbon, that comprised her morning's shopping - lapwing feathers, essence of snake-skin, and a new school tie.  
  
They were bowed out of the shop by Peleus Buntz, and walked up the cobble-stoned street, to the sound of birdsong, explosions from the nearby school of Alchemy, and constant throat-clearing from Lucius Malfoy.  
  
He suddenly stopped and turned to her.     
  
"What can I do to make you love me, Narcissa?"    
  
Narcissa was startled by his language - after all, marriage was a business transaction; love was something that came later, or was visited on the side.    
  
"I don't know," she said vaguely, staring in at the window of Eeylops Owl Emporium. It was so dark within that the window was little more than a dark mirror, broken by the occasional bright, amber eye. Narcissa saw her reflection - pale, stunning, pitiless - and it gave her goose-bumps. She controlled herself, however.   
  
"Perhaps if you were Minister For Magic," she suggested lightly.   
  
Lucius was silent for a while. He, too, was looking at her reflection.   
  
"Alright," he said suddenly, "I could do that. But it will take time. And I can't wait -,"   
  
"You mean that you are not accustomed to waiting," Narcissa interrupted. "But you can, and you will, simply because there is nothing else to be done."   
  
Malfoy was silent again. "Then you… you do not care for me?" he said at last.  
  
"I see no reason to, at present."   
  
"But if I could give you a reason… if I could do it… do you promise…?"  
  
Narcissa was still gazing at her dark reflection. She flicked her hair experimentally. Yes, that was perfect.   
  
"I will consider it," she replied.   
  
"There are other women who would beg me for this kind of attention."   
  
Narcissa raised her eyebrows. "You'd better marry one of them, then, hadn't you?"  
  
She turned to leave, but Malfoy caught her arm. "Narcissa - ,"  
  
Narcissa's temper suddenly flared. She was already raw from concealing her exuberance, and now this man had dared to touch her, as though she were just _anybody_ , as though she were a rag-doll or a muggle, instead of a daughter of the House of Black.     
  
"My blood-line is pure and ancient, Mr Malfoy," she said. For the first time, there was no trace of boredom in her voice. "I know my own worth. And I'm only taking bids from men with… potential."   
  
She drew her arm out of his grip and took her packages from him. "I wish you joy of your _beggars_ , Mr Malfoy," she said icily. "No man could induce me to debase myself like that… unless he were Minister for Magic, of course."   
  
And she walked away, leaving Malfoy to stare miserably after her.         
  
  
Lucius went to rejoin Snape in Knockturn Alley. The sunlight streamed down warily here, kept at bay by the black ivy that twisted itself over everything in the cobble-stoned street, and by temporary clouds conjured by businessmen who didn't want their affairs pried into. In fact, as far as Malfoy knew, this was where the phrase 'shady businessmen' had originated.  
  
He found Snape in The Hanged Man, poring over another book on Mind Magic. It wasn't easy to make him look up when he was immersed in these volumes, so Malfoy kicked over a chair, and threw his cane at the barman, who was not very alert at the best of times, and barely seemed to realise that he had been hit with it.   
  
"Something wrong?" Snape asked quietly.   
  
"I have to become Minister for Magic," Lucius answered shortly.   
  
Snape absorbed this information with the same easy acceptance with which he faced everything these days. Aside from the question of whether or not he was going to kill Potter, nothing really mattered. And it never occurred to him to question anything Lucius Malfoy said. He was a pure-blood wizard, and a Death Eater. He knew what he was talking about.     
  
"Well, it's not impossible," he said fairly. "You've got a better chance than most wizards your age."   
  
Lucius sat down heavily. The barman wandered over and offered him his cane, but Malfoy ignored him, so he dropped the cane beside their table and wondered off, shaking violently, as always.    
  
"Narcissa won't marry me unless I become Minister for Magic," Malfoy explained sullenly, resting his chin on his upturned palm and staring out of the window.   
  
"Oh," said Severus.   
  
"And there's no other woman like her."   
  
Severus, who could sense another speech on Narcissa's various perfections coming, lowered his eyes to his book again. He was just starting a chapter on Legilimency - there was a section on giving your victims horrible nightmares by planting unsettling images in their minds - and, as usual, he was fantasising about using this on James Potter.    
  
"All the other women I've been with," Malfoy went on, "all they wanted was prestige. The honour of being with a Malfoy. They were using me."   
  
Severus smiled thinly, but did not look up from his book. "My heart bleeds for you," he said.  
  
"It is not pleasant to be used, Severus," Malfoy said, a shade reproachfully.    
  
"I'm not saying it is. I'm just saying that, if I was going to be used, that's how I'd like it to happen."   
  
Malfoy hardly seemed to hear him. "They just wanted to please me. How base, how _servile_ they were."   
  
Severus thought of saying that he couldn't imagine Bellatrix Black acting servile, but the truth was, he could, and he didn't want to, so he changed the subject.  
  
"You said in your letter that you were ill."   
  
In truth, Severus had arrived at The Hanged Man in a state of bitter, but rigidly-controlled, despair. He had expected to be accused of lacing Malfoy's Butterbeer with Amortentia – half of him had even _wanted_ to be accused of lacing Malfoy's Butterbeer with Amortentia. He wanted to _fight_ somebody. He was sick of events just rolling over him in their contemptuous, indifferent way.   
  
He had been so certain that the episode with the Dark Snitch would make him feel better – not fix things, of course, because Lily was still lost to him, and Potter would always be an idiot, no matter how many times he tried to saw his own arm off. But he had expected... _something_. Some kind of easing of the tension that had been building up in his chest since last summer, when he'd been dangled upside-down in front of the whole school, and goaded into calling Lily a mudblood. He had expected to feel some measure of control over his own life again, but the injustice of Dumbledore's reaction – the injustice of the entire _school's_ reaction – the way Potter was now being visited by a handful of adoring girls who seemed to be driven wild by the sight of a scar – had shaken him to the core.   
  
He had made terrible resolutions, and he was afraid of backing them up. He knew now that he had to give up on finding justice by legitimate means. He had to join the Death Eaters as soon as possible – as soon as they'd have him – but he was afraid of the finality of that act. So he had settled into a state of reckless, seething despair, skulking in corners, snapping at everyone who dared to approach him, and looking at Lily with a kind of hungry contempt, wondering each time whether he would ever see her again.   
  
"I _am_ ill!" Malfoy shouted, making the Bartender jump. "Do I _look_ healthy? Narcissa says I have to be Minister for Magic before she'll even look at me, and every second when she _doesn't_ look at me is excruciating! How am I going to get through an election campaign when I'm dying by inches every second? What would _you_ do, Severus?"   
  
Snape stared at him, astonished. Pure-bloods didn't often ask for his opinion. They assumed that someone whose opinion was worth valuing would have bothered to wash his hair. Besides, it was a widely-held belief that proximity to muggles sapped your intelligence. Severus had spent his entire childhood surrounded by them – although, in his defence, he had tried to hide himself away as much as possible.   
  
But now, Malfoy was hungrily awaiting his reply, as though he was a prophet of common-sense. And he'd barely had the Amortentia in his system for three days! What was going to happen after a week – a _month_ – of this sentimental poisoning?   
  
"She'll see reason," Snape said slowly. "She's a Slytherin."   
  
Lucius grunted.  He was absent-mindedly playing with a thin strip of blue satin in his hands. He had stolen it from Peleus Buntz's shop; it was one of the off-cuts of Narcissa's new dress.   
  
"Is there anyone she likes at Hogwarts?" he murmured.    
  
"Your closest rival is her mirror."   
  
Malfoy bristled, but didn't say anything. In spite of Snape's disrespectful tone, he knew that he was telling the truth, simply because he had no other option. There was a charm placed upon trainee Death Eaters: if you lied to another Death Eater, your nose would start to bleed. If you didn't immediately respond with the truth, the bleeding wouldn't stop. No amount of healing magic could help you. Only the truth would prevent you from bleeding to death. Snape was under this charm, and he knew it; he couldn't lie to Lucius Malfoy.    
  
However, concealment was Snape's primary occupation. It had started out as a necessity and turned into a hobby. He liked to seem mysterious, to his friends as well as his enemies - he thought that people were more likely to fear him if they didn't understand him.     
  
He had devoted a large portion of his considerable intellect towards planning for just such an eventuality as this. The Charm placed upon trainee Death Eaters had the same loop-hole as Veritaserum: you had to tell the truth, but you didn't have to tell the _whole_ truth. If they didn't ask, there was no need to tell.   
  
"Do you think Narcissa has the ability to mix up a love potion this strong?" Malfoy asked suddenly.   
  
Snape told him honestly that he didn't.   
  
"But someone could have done it for her?"   
  
"Yes," Snape said carefully.  
  
"Who would she trust to help her with something like that?"   
  
"Nobody," Severus replied, again with perfect honesty. Narcissa didn't _trust_ people; she manipulated them. But he was starting to feel anxious now - he'd come close to lying - and, when Lucius looked away, he gave a cautious sniff. Was he just imagining it, or was his nose starting to run? He made an artless attempt to change the subject.   
  
"Did you know that you don't need a wand to practise mind magic?" he asked.    
  
Lucius made a non-committal noise and continued to stare out of the window.     
  
Severus was beginning to understand that he had been practising Occlumency since he was four years-old. Whenever his parents argued, he would lie back on his bed and stare at his bedroom ceiling; it was always striped with the gritty amber light of the street-lamps filtering through the blinds; and, while shouts and thuds shook the floor beneath him, Severus would concentrate on those bars of light and hypnotise himself into a state of calm, sneering indifference. Nothing could touch him in that state.    
  
But all magic exacts a toll, just as every potion has a side-effect: you couldn't work magic without giving a part of yourself in return.    
  
The unfortunate side-effect of Snape's emotional subterfuge was that it resulted in emotional pyrotechnics: sudden outbursts of anger, or passion, or grief, that could, at times, knock him unconscious.    
  
Lucius sighed. "No, perhaps she doesn't trust anyone. But she's going to start trusting _you_ , Severus. You must be my eyes and ears at Hogwarts. You must find out if she's poisoning me. And keep men away from her, whether she's poisoning me or not."   
  
Malfoy examined the tattered piece of satin in his hand. "All she cares about is having a powerful husband," he murmured sullenly.   
  
"Very wise," Severus replied.  
  
"It's as though marrying is her job."        
  
Severus smiled. "'Farewell the tranquil mind, farewell content. Narcissa's occupation's back.'"   
  
Malfoy glanced sideways at his companion. He'd noticed that Severus was getting more and more flippant these days.  
  
"How are things at home, Severus?" he asked pointedly.  
  
Snape looked up. His usual answer, 'fine', would cause him to bleed to death.   
  
"No different," he said, after a while, and then turned back to his book in resentful silence.    
  
Malfoy smirked; he felt as though he had scored a moral victory. You had to keep these people in their place.


	14. Spilt Milk, Part One

Snape spent morning break leaning against the wall in the dungeon corridor, glowering at passers-by. Avery and Lestrange were lounging around nearby, reading The Purist - a magazine devoted to the Dark Arts and the history of pure-blood families, banned at Hogwarts because of its inflammatory anti-muggle sentiment.   
  
(If Dumbledore had troubled to read it, it would probably not have been banned, because it was the dreariest magazine Snape had ever seen - full of gushing articles about pure-blood marriages, and interviews with ‘wealthy young gad-about’ Lucius Malfoy. Still, it was forbidden, and forbidden things have an irresistible charm).      
  
Avery was tripping up passing first-years. As a natural bully, he had an unfailing bully’s instinct about who would fight back from this kind of attack, and who wouldn’t. Snape half-watched from over the top of his book, as Avery glanced at each student that passed, summed them up, and then stuck out his leg or drew it back in, depending on whether or not they met his eyes.   
  
Cruelty was a very precise science, as Snape was beginning to learn, and you had to know basic rules, first principles, before you could make it work for you. The first of these was fear, because hurting someone who wasn’t afraid of being hurt by you was a terrible waste.   
  
When he saw Lily coming, holding a stack of books clasped to her chest, he felt a lurch of pleasure, which froze quickly into apprehension when he realized that Avery had got up and moved to block her path.   
  
“Sorry, there’s a toll for coming down here, Evans,” Avery said. “You have to name at least one magical ancestor, or we don’t let you pass.”   
  
Snape reddened but didn’t look up from his book.   
  
“I really feel awful that I can’t boast about my parents being cousins,” Lily said calmly. “I’ll thank you not to rub it in.”  
  
“You know, Evans, even for a mudblood, your name sounds common. I bet -,”  
  
Avery stopped in mid-sentence. He had an odd look on his face, as though he was about to sneeze. Suddenly, he gave a high-pitched yelp and clutched his face. Between his fingers, a large purple boil was emerging, just under his right eye.   
  
“What did you do?” Lestrange yelled at Lily, looking desperately around for a wand that might have conjured the boil.   
  
Lily shrugged and said, in a would-be solemn voice: “Maybe he’d better go to the Hospital Wing, if he’s - ,”   
  
“I’ll get you for this, Mudblood!” Avery yelled, lurching towards her, but he hadn’t got two feet before his yells re-doubled, and a second boil erupted on his face, this time on his forehead.      
  
“Looks like some kind of Selective Verbalization Charm to me,” Lily said seriously. She gave a little shrug and added: “but then, I’m just Muggle-born.”   
  
She paused, and tilted her head, her eyes wide with innocence. “What is it you call muggle-borns again?”  
  
Avery snarled, and knocked the books out of her arms, so that they fell heavily to the floor, bringing up clouds of dust. Lily returned his gaze with raised eyebrows; she didn’t back away. Snape couldn’t suppress the thought that she was doing this deliberately, to see if he would interfere.   
  
“Are you going to duel me the muggle way, Avery?” she asked. “Because you can’t beat me at magic, can you, even if your parents were cousins?”    
  
Avery groped in his pocket for his wand and raised it at her threateningly. “Anytime, Mudblood - .”  
  
Lily winced sympathetically as he cried out again. Another purple boil had risen, bright and throbbing, on his face. “Dear me, you don’t learn, do you?”   
  
Avery was on the verge of gurgling a curse when a shield charm suddenly erupted in front of Lily, knocking Avery off his feet. Her eyes darted triumphantly towards Snape, but it was clear in a moment that the Shield Charm had not been conjured by him.   
  
Slughorn was standing behind the Slytherins, his face pink and his moustache ruffling as he spluttered: “Cowardly behaviour, Avery! Impolitic too. If there’s one thing I thought every Slytherin knew, it’s not to start fights that you can’t win.”   
  
“She put a curse on me, Professor,” Avery protested, pointing to the three purple boils on his face: “Look!”  
  
“It’s true, Sir!” Lestrange bellowed, “every time he said the word M - ,” he stopped himself, glancing apprehensively at Slughorn.  
  
Snape buried his face in his hands.    
  
“Which word would this be, Lestrange?” Slughorn asked calmly.    
  
Lestrange decided, much too late, to play dumb, and shook his head rapidly.   
  
Slughorn cleared his throat, waited a moment to see if anyone was going to say anything, and then clapped his hands breezily. “Well, if there was no provocation, Avery, I have no choice but to put you in detention.”  
  
“It was when I said ‘mud blood’!” Avery muttered, with a surly shrug.    
  
“Also worthy of detention,” Slughorn replied calmly. “Actually, it should be one detention for each time you said it.” He peered at the three purple boils on Avery’s face. “Let’s call it two detentions, shall we? I’m sure the last one was an accident.”   
  
“What about her? She jinxed me!”   
  
“Ah, yes,” Slughorn sighed. “A Selective Verbalization Charm, eh, Miss Evans? I didn’t think Professor Flitwick taught those below seventh year?”   
  
“He doesn’t, Sir,” she replied calmly, “so it couldn‘t have been me who jinxed Avery, could it?”  
  
Slughorn‘s moustache twitched as the corners of his mouth turned upwards. “Well, you have a point there. Can you prove that it was Miss Evans who put this jinx on you, Avery?”   
  
“You can!” Avery protested, sounding increasingly hysterical. “Do Priori Incantatem!”   
  
“Ah,” Slughorn’s smile fell. “Very well, very well. Miss Evans, your wand, if you please.”   
  
Lily handed it over.   
  
“How far back shall I go?” Slughorn enquired politely. “When was the last time you called someone a ‘Mudblood’ without a purple boil appearing on your face?”  
  
Lestrange, as if he hadn’t done enough damage already, reminded Avery that he had called Quentin Trimble a Mudblood at breakfast.   
  
Slughorn sighed. “Very well then. Three detentions, and I shall go back to eight o’clock this morning.”   
  
He muttered “Priori Incantatem,” and touched the tip of Lily’s wand with his own. The shadow of her morning’s spells rose in smoky forms from her wand-tip. Snape, who had been so starved of the sight of her, was fascinated by this demonstration of her everyday life.   
  
There were plenty of Summoning Charms - which she had once called lazy -  then Rictusempra - which meant that she had been tickling somebody - Mary MacDonald, from the sound of the high, operatic laugh that was now issuing from her wand and echoing through the dungeon corridor. Then came the Reparo spell- which meant that she had been fixing something; then Expelliarmus and Impedimenta - Defensive spells, presumably because she had been attacked by a Slytherin in the corridors. She hadn’t retaliated. Whether this was simply her gentle nature, or her awareness that she might have Priori Incantatem performed on her wand later, Snape wasn’t sure. Lastly, and inexplicably, there was the Riddikulus Charm, which Snape had only ever seen used for defeating Boggarts. He wondered what had happened to make her use it.     
  
Still, there was no Selective Verbalization Charm; that much was undeniable.  
  
Slughorn clapped his hands heartily and said. “Well, there we are. Fascinating, Miss Evans. I’m sure Avery will own that he owes you an apology.”    
  
Avery gave an extremely resentful shrug and mumbled something indistinguishable. Slughorn must have decided to assume that it was an apology, however, because he said cheerfully:   
  
“Well, I’m glad we got to the bottom of that. See Madam Pomfrey about those boils, won’t you, Avery? Oh, and be sure to thank your father the next time you speak to him for the crystallised pineapple he so kindly sent me.”  
  
Lily, who had been displaying Occlumency-worthy powers of self-control all this time, now hurried off before she was presented with any more temptation to laugh.  
  
Snape watched her for a while, and then, with no definite plan, and thinking he was stupid for even trying, he followed.    
  
She opened the door to the dungeon classroom where they had Potions lessons and went inside.    
  
Snape stood in the doorway, feeling eager and miserable at the same time. He hadn’t spoken to her for three months, unless you counted the endless string of apologies he’d written in their ledger.              
  
“I was going to help you,” he said, to announce his presence.  
  
Lily looked up and raised her eyebrows coolly. “You were leaving it kind of late, weren’t you?”   
  
Snape didn’t know what to say to this, so he kept silent.   
  
“Well, I don’t want your help,” she said, with a little, twisted smile. “So, next time, you can spare yourself the trouble of _thinking about it_.”   
  
“Whose wand did you use for the Selective Verbalization Charm?” he asked, trying to keep his voice casual.   
  
Lily didn’t reply, but he thought he saw a smile playing around the corners of her mouth. Taking this for encouragement, he went on:  
  
“What are you doing?”   
  
“If I tell you, will you go away?”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
She sighed and went on, in a business-like tone, “They’ve discovered a new dragon breed in Peru - a cross between a Vipertooth, and a Hungarian Horntail that somehow got sent to the wrong Reservation. It breathes poisonous fire, and nobody has discovered the Antidote, so Slughorn suggested that I work on it for a side-project. Based on the Paracelsan principle that like treats like, I’ve decided to try and make Antidote Fire.”   
  
Snape felt a bitter surge of longing. A few months ago, she would have asked for his help on something like this. For a moment, he was tormented with the idea of working with her after classes in the dungeons, talking about the properties of powdered bicorn horn and inventing ingenious new insults for James Potter.   
  
“Look,” he mumbled, glaring at the floor. “We’ve been friends forever. And you know I’m sorry - you know I didn’t mean to - .”    
  
“Why did you have to say it?” she asked angrily.   
  
“I don’t know!” he shouted. “I don’t know why I said it! I was angry. But you know I didn’t mean it. You know I think you’re - .” Snape dragged himself back from the brink of that sentence. He had to be careful what he said. He could feel the loneliness, the bitterness of the last few months looming above him. It was like a tidal wave, poised to break over him and drag him out to sea. He saw Roger Davies kissing her outside her front door, heard the sickening laughter of the crowd down by the lake, felt the oppressive silence of the nights he had spent reading alone in the library or in abandoned classrooms, sitting up late until he was almost asleep at his desk, so that he wouldn’t have to think about what he’d lost. Lily could draw this poison out of him. He needed her. And he had the wildest urge, right at this moment, to tell her so.  
  
Lily’s eyebrows were raised, but her expression had softened. She seemed suspended between scepticism and sympathy.    
  
He had to look away from her softened expression to collect his thoughts, and it was then that he saw it. A spider was crawling across her ledger on the desk in front of her; it moved slowly and stickily, as though it was wading through jam.  
  
“Lily, shut your eyes,” he said suddenly.   
  
Lily raised her eyebrows still further.   
  
“There’s a spider,” he pressed on. “Shut your eyes; I’ll get rid of it.”   
  
And, incredibly, she shut them. Snape felt almost dizzy with relief. She still trusted him. Everything was not lost.    
  
But the next moment, everything was lost. He knew that instantly, even though it took him a while to work out exactly what had happened.  
  
Something black and heavy hurtled past his ear and struck Lily on the side of the head, with a sickening, ringing sound that bounced off the dungeon walls. And then another sound echoed through the dungeon, and through every nerve and sinew in his body; a high, hysterical laugh.   
  
Bellatrix Black was standing in the doorway, convulsed with laughter. Snape had never seen her looking so mad. “I can’t believe she fell for that,” she whispered ecstatically, and then darted from the room, as though happiness had made her weightless.   
  
Snape looked back at Lily, his brain crawling torturously towards the realisation of what had happened. He hoped that when he understood it, he would at least be able to move.   
  
She was stirring. There was a lot of blood and dust, but she was stirring. She wasn’t dead.     
  
“What in Heaven’s name is going on here?”   
  
Snape was so relieved to see Lily move that he didn’t immediately register the terrible trouble he was in. Professor McGonagall’s voice was not exactly soothing, though, and he couldn’t help starting guiltily at the sound of it.   
  
Without waiting for an answer, Professor McGonagall swept past him and helped Lily up from the floor. “Miss Evans?” she said loudly. “Can you hear me?”   
  
Lily said something that sounded like ‘ess, presser’. There was blood pouring down the side of her face.   
  
“Can you walk to the Hospital Wing?” McGonagall asked.  
  
Lily blinked blood out of her eyes, nodded, and then half-sank to the floor. McGonagall caught her and pulled her to her feet again.    
  
“I’ll take her - ,” Snape began urgently, but McGonagall raised her eyebrows.  
  
“Yes, I was not actually born yesterday, Mr. Snape,” she said irritably. “I will take her.”  
  
“I didn’t do it,” he said. His throat felt very tight. He couldn’t take his eyes off Lily’s blood-stained face. “It was Bellatrix Black, she - ,”  
  
“Well, it will be easy enough to find out,” McGonagall said crisply. “Give me your wand.”   
  
Snape fumbled in his pocket for his wand. His hands were shaking.   
  
“We will see whether the last spell you performed was a Levitation Charm,” McGonagall continued.   
  
Snape, holding out his wand to her, suddenly drew it back.   
  
“The last spell that I performed?” he repeated.    
  
Professor McGonagall raised her eyebrows. “Priori Incantatem, if you prefer the technical vocabulary, Snape.”   
  
“I - I don’t want you to do that,” he stammered.   
  
“And why not?”   
  
The last spell he had performed had been an Unforgivable Curse. This meant immediate expulsion, if not arrest, but he might be able to talk his way out of being expelled if he admitted to attacking Lily. In fact, it wouldn’t have cost him a moment’s hesitation, if it hadn’t been Lily, if he hadn’t been so close to being her friend again, and if she hadn’t looked so horribly injured, white and swaying and insensible as she was at McGonagall’s side.     
  
“Because I did it,” Snape said quietly, looking at the floor.  
  
McGonagall surveyed him over her spectacles with suspicious dislike. He thought the dislike must have been stronger than the suspicion, however, because she didn’t ask him any more questions.   
  
“Meet me in my office in ten minutes, Mr. Snape. We will discuss your punishment then.” She didn’t wait for a response, but turned abruptly and said, her voice suddenly gentle, “come along, Miss Evans.”   
  
  
Lily spent the rest of the afternoon in the Hospital Wing. She felt enormously cheerful, and wondered whether this was because of the concussion or the thrilling, liberating feeling of total misery. Her heart was broken, and anything that happened now was just a vaguely amusing epilogue. Whatever happened next, the characters she cared about were already dead.  
  
She was suddenly interested in everything; she had five visitors that afternoon, and asked them questions as though she was interviewing them for Witch Weekly. She found out that Mary Macdonald wanted to be a Quidditch referee, Meg Valance had once kissed both Regulus and Sirius Black on the same night, and Margot Holloway (cold, clinical Margot Holloway!) had been entered for a beauty pageant as an eight year-old girl.  
  
“How did it go?” Lily had asked, leaning her cheek on her hand; she was unnaturally flushed, her green eyes over-bright, but if Margot noticed anything unusual in this feverish interest, she didn’t say so.   
  
“I came second,” Margot said pleasantly. The memory didn’t appear to cause her any discomfort. “To Narcissa Black, actually.”  
  
“Really?”   
  
“Yes. Her nose was straighter, apparently.”   
  
Lily summoned a mental image of Narcissa Black. She wouldn’t have called her nose straight exactly, because it was permanently wrinkled with disgust, but that might just have been because she was near Lily. To most pure-blood Slytherins, Lily was the visual equivalent of a slap in the face. Presumably, when it had nothing to aggravate it, Narcissa’s nose could be as straight as it pleased.   
  
“Well,” Lily said at length, “she’s pretty in a very obvious way. I think beauty should be interesting. I mean, Narcissa Black’s hair is very boring. It’s not light and floaty like yours.”        
  
Margot tilted her head to one side. “That’s very nice of you,” she said, without the barest trace of a smile. “I privately didn’t agree with the judges either.”     
  
“Were you disappointed?” Lily asked.   
  
“No. I think perhaps father was. But I found the whole experience - .”  
  
“Fascinating,” Lily finished her sentence for her, with a broad smile.      
  
After Margot had left, James Potter trooped in to the Hospital Wing, covered with mud, and surrounded by his usual crowd of sycophantic Quidditch fans (nine this time, plus a cat, which Peter Pettigrew, in all the excitement, seemed to have forgotten he was holding. He was certainly waving his arms with the kind of reckless abandon that people who knew that they were holding cats did not generally use).  
  
Lily watched as Madam Pomfrey began shrieking ineffectually about the mud, and Meg Valance launched into a description of the spectacular Quidditch move which had resulted in Potter’s injury.   
  
Had either been listening to the other, the altercation would have been over in a few seconds. As it was, it took at least five minutes for each to make the other understand the importance of what they were saying. James Potter was leaning casually against the wall and making no effort to help. Lily realised after a few minutes that he was staring at her, and promptly buried her head in the latest issue of Witch Weekly. She always tried not to look at James Potter on principle, because she didn’t think he should be encouraged.   
  
Eventually, Madam Pomfrey made everyone other than Potter leave, and promised Pettigrew that she would report his animal cruelty to Professor Dumbledore, if he didn’t start being more careful. She stormed into her office to mix up a potion which, Lily knew from the expression on her face, she would not be sweetening. After a few moments, Potter made his way over to Lily’s bedside and said, in his most casual voice, “Hi, Evans.”     
  
“Hello,” she said cheerfully, looking up from her magazine. “What are you in for? Quidditch again?”   
  
“Bludger dislocated my shoulder,” he said grimly.   
  
“Ouch,” Lily replied, because she was clearly supposed to.   
  
James beamed at her. “Still caught the Snitch, though,” he added, quite unnecessarily, because he had been playing with it for the past five minutes.   
  
“Of course you did,” she replied, with an indulgent smile.   
  
Misinterpreting the smile as encouragement, James began to describe the circumstances of his injury to her. “I was diving for the Snitch – I must have been fifty feet up – and it was about two inches off the ground. It was a sheer vertical drop. Wilkes had given up completely.”   
  
“Wilkes?”   
  
“The Slytherin Seeker,” James explained, “but, as I was pulling out of the dive, the Bludger hit my shoulder and knocked me off course. I leapt off my broom, dived for the Snitch, grabbed it, rolled and landed on the floor, right at Madam Hooch’s feet.”   
  
“Oh,” Lily said, politely. Then, feeling that more was required of her, and not trusting herself to add any insights on Quidditch technique, she said, “do you practise in the holidays?”   
  
“Yeah, all the time. Why?”   
  
“It’s just that there are no muggle-borns on the House Teams, and I was wondering whether it’s because they can’t practise outside school. Their parents’ houses don’t have muggle-repelling charms, obviously, and most of them don’t have their own brooms. I was thinking of asking Dumbledore if we could set up a Quidditch club in the summer holidays, so that muggle-born students could practise.”  
  
Potter’s eyes were shining. “Just for muggle-borns?” he asked tentatively.   
  
“Of course not. In fact…” Lily hesitated. “I know I could get a lot more people to come if I said that you were involved.”   
  
Fierce joy rose in James Potter; it robbed him temporarily of the power of speech. For a while, he just grinned stupidly, until Lily’s embarrassment prompted her to add:   
  
“And the rest of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, of course, if you think they’d be interested,” she murmured, blushing. “We could have hot chocolate when it got too dark to play. Hagrid – you know he gets lonely in the summer holidays – even said he’d do some baking.”  
  
“Yeah…” James faltered slightly, then rushed on, seemingly determined, “maybe you could get Davies to bring the Ravenclaw team along.”   
  
“Actually, we’ve split up.”   
  
James dropped the Snitch. It fell a few inches, then fluttered away, looking distinctly ruffled, to hover by the window.    
  
“I’m sorry,” he said, unconvincingly.   
  
“That’s OK,” she turned her eyes back to the cover of Witch Weekly. Gilderoy Lockhart, dressed in his school robes, was beaming up at her with an unwavering smile, brandishing a stunned gnome heroically above his head. Lily remembered that Potter’s ex-girlfriend, the extraordinarily dim-witted Malificent, had gone off with Gilderoy Lockhart, and she felt warmer towards Potter. Somehow, these sympathetic thoughts caused her head to hurt, so she opened the magazine, in search of further distractions.      
  
Perceiving that Lily didn’t want to go into details, and much too happy to require any, James said: “So, what are you in for?”   
  
Lily blinked. She had almost succeeded in forgetting. “Concussion,” she said simply.   
  
“Oh, I wondered why you were talking to me,” he said cheerfully.   
  
She laughed. “I’m alright now,” she lied. “Madam Pomfrey wants to keep me in overnight.”   
  
“How’d you get concussion?”   
  
Lily bit her lip. “I got hit on the head with a cauldron,” she said, as though she was confessing to some very stupid mistake.    
  
“What?”  
  
“It was my own stupid fault,” she went on, laughing. “I let my guard down in front of a Slytherin.” She settled back on her pillows and looked up at the ceiling, feeling as though a Dementor was sewn up inside her chest, sucking parasitically at her heart.   
  
“Still, it would take several hundred cauldrons to the head to make me think I wanted to leave Hogwarts,” she added, without smiling.   
  
“Who did it?” James asked casually.  
  
Lily looked back at him, her eyes narrowed. “You’re just curious, right? Because he’s already got detention, I don’t think he needs any kind of extra-curricula punishment.”    
  
“Oh yeah, I’m sure he’s learned his lesson.” James said sarcastically.  
  
“And I don’t want Gryffindor to lose any points on account of one stupid Slytherin,” she persisted.    
  
“Who was it?” he asked again.   
  
Thankfully, Madam Pomfrey chose that moment to come over and fix James’ dislocated shoulder. He very bravely suppressed a moan of pain when she cracked his shoulder back into place, but he couldn’t help spitting out the foul-tasting potion he was instructed to drink. Madam Pomfrey relented, grudgingly, and went to fetch some sugar.   
  
Lily could feel James’ eyes on her in the silence, which was very distracting, but did her best to ignore it by immersing herself in her magazine. When Madam Pomfrey had come back with the sweetened potion, ensured that he drank all of it, and promised him that if he didn’t take better care of his limbs, she would soon start refusing to treat him, James went back over to Lily’s bed.   
  
“Hey, Evans - .”  
  
“Lily,” she said absently.   
  
“What?”   
  
“Call me Lily.”   
  
James stared at her. She wondered if she was once again revealing her ignorance of the wizarding world. Perhaps wizards showed friendliness by referring to each other by their last names.   
  
James seemed to be trying to remember what he had been about to say. “Um… Do you want me to go to the library and get you a book? If you’re going to be here all night, I mean… I’m going anyway,” he assured her.   
  
“Oh… OK, yeah. If you’re going anyway.”   
  
He was grinning at her again. Lily found this very disconcerting. Mostly to avoid his gaze, she scribbled the title and shelf-mark of Sympathetic Magic on some parchment and handed it to him. She didn’t feel like reading anything unfamiliar. Her head still hurt, but even this sensation was more curious than painful. She felt as though she was turning into Margot Holloway. She even hoped that it was going to last.


	15. Spilt Milk, Part Two

Snape spent morning break leaning against the wall in the dungeon corridor, glowering at passers-by. Avery and Lestrange were lounging around nearby, reading The Purist - a magazine devoted to the Dark Arts and the history of pure-blood families, banned at Hogwarts because of its inflammatory anti-muggle sentiment.   
  
(If Dumbledore had troubled to read it, it would probably not have been banned, because it was the dreariest magazine Snape had ever seen - full of gushing articles about pure-blood marriages, and interviews with ‘wealthy young gad-about’ Lucius Malfoy. Still, it was forbidden, and forbidden things have an irresistible charm).      
  
Avery was tripping up passing first-years. As a natural bully, he had an unfailing bully’s instinct about who would fight back from this kind of attack, and who wouldn’t. Snape half-watched from over the top of his book, as Avery glanced at each student that passed, summed them up, and then stuck out his leg or drew it back in, depending on whether or not they met his eyes.   
  
Cruelty was a very precise science, as Snape was beginning to learn, and you had to know basic rules, first principles, before you could make it work for you. The first of these was fear, because hurting someone who wasn’t afraid of being hurt by you was a terrible waste.   
  
When he saw Lily coming, holding a stack of books clasped to her chest, he felt a lurch of pleasure, which froze quickly into apprehension when he realized that Avery had got up and moved to block her path.   
  
“Sorry, there’s a toll for coming down here, Evans,” Avery said. “You have to name at least one magical ancestor, or we don’t let you pass.”   
  
Snape reddened but didn’t look up from his book.   
  
“I really feel awful that I can’t boast about my parents being cousins,” Lily said calmly. “I’ll thank you not to rub it in.”  
  
“You know, Evans, even for a mudblood, your name sounds common. I bet -,”  
  
Avery stopped in mid-sentence. He had an odd look on his face, as though he was about to sneeze. Suddenly, he gave a high-pitched yelp and clutched his face. Between his fingers, a large purple boil was emerging, just under his right eye.   
  
“What did you do?” Lestrange yelled at Lily, looking desperately around for a wand that might have conjured the boil.   
  
Lily shrugged and said, in a would-be solemn voice: “Maybe he’d better go to the Hospital Wing, if he’s - ,”   
  
“I’ll get you for this, Mudblood!” Avery yelled, lurching towards her, but he hadn’t got two feet before his yells re-doubled, and a second boil erupted on his face, this time on his forehead.      
  
“Looks like some kind of Selective Verbalization Charm to me,” Lily said seriously. She gave a little shrug and added: “but then, I’m just Muggle-born.”   
  
She paused, and tilted her head, her eyes wide with innocence. “What is it you call muggle-borns again?”  
  
Avery snarled, and knocked the books out of her arms, so that they fell heavily to the floor, bringing up clouds of dust. Lily returned his gaze with raised eyebrows; she didn’t back away. Snape couldn’t suppress the thought that she was doing this deliberately, to see if he would interfere.   
  
“Are you going to duel me the muggle way, Avery?” she asked. “Because you can’t beat me at magic, can you, even if your parents were cousins?”    
  
Avery groped in his pocket for his wand and raised it at her threateningly. “Anytime, Mudblood - .”  
  
Lily winced sympathetically as he cried out again. Another purple boil had risen, bright and throbbing, on his face. “Dear me, you don’t learn, do you?”   
  
Avery was on the verge of gurgling a curse when a shield charm suddenly erupted in front of Lily, knocking Avery off his feet. Her eyes darted triumphantly towards Snape, but it was clear in a moment that the Shield Charm had not been conjured by him.   
  
Slughorn was standing behind the Slytherins, his face pink and his moustache ruffling as he spluttered: “Cowardly behaviour, Avery! Impolitic too. If there’s one thing I thought every Slytherin knew, it’s not to start fights that you can’t win.”   
  
“She put a curse on me, Professor,” Avery protested, pointing to the three purple boils on his face: “Look!”  
  
“It’s true, Sir!” Lestrange bellowed, “every time he said the word M - ,” he stopped himself, glancing apprehensively at Slughorn.  
  
Snape buried his face in his hands.    
  
“Which word would this be, Lestrange?” Slughorn asked calmly.    
  
Lestrange decided, much too late, to play dumb, and shook his head rapidly.   
  
Slughorn cleared his throat, waited a moment to see if anyone was going to say anything, and then clapped his hands breezily. “Well, if there was no provocation, Avery, I have no choice but to put you in detention.”  
  
“It was when I said ‘mud blood’!” Avery muttered, with a surly shrug.    
  
“Also worthy of detention,” Slughorn replied calmly. “Actually, it should be one detention for each time you said it.” He peered at the three purple boils on Avery’s face. “Let’s call it two detentions, shall we? I’m sure the last one was an accident.”   
  
“What about her? She jinxed me!”   
  
“Ah, yes,” Slughorn sighed. “A Selective Verbalization Charm, eh, Miss Evans? I didn’t think Professor Flitwick taught those below seventh year?”   
  
“He doesn’t, Sir,” she replied calmly, “so it couldn‘t have been me who jinxed Avery, could it?”  
  
Slughorn‘s moustache twitched as the corners of his mouth turned upwards. “Well, you have a point there. Can you prove that it was Miss Evans who put this jinx on you, Avery?”   
  
“You can!” Avery protested, sounding increasingly hysterical. “Do Priori Incantatem!”   
  
“Ah,” Slughorn’s smile fell. “Very well, very well. Miss Evans, your wand, if you please.”   
  
Lily handed it over.   
  
“How far back shall I go?” Slughorn enquired politely. “When was the last time you called someone a ‘Mudblood’ without a purple boil appearing on your face?”  
  
Lestrange, as if he hadn’t done enough damage already, reminded Avery that he had called Quentin Trimble a Mudblood at breakfast.   
  
Slughorn sighed. “Very well then. Three detentions, and I shall go back to eight o’clock this morning.”   
  
He muttered “Priori Incantatem,” and touched the tip of Lily’s wand with his own. The shadow of her morning’s spells rose in smoky forms from her wand-tip. Snape, who had been so starved of the sight of her, was fascinated by this demonstration of her everyday life.   
  
There were plenty of Summoning Charms - which she had once called lazy -  then Rictusempra - which meant that she had been tickling somebody - Mary MacDonald, from the sound of the high, operatic laugh that was now issuing from her wand and echoing through the dungeon corridor. Then came the Reparo spell- which meant that she had been fixing something; then Expelliarmus and Impedimenta - Defensive spells, presumably because she had been attacked by a Slytherin in the corridors. She hadn’t retaliated. Whether this was simply her gentle nature, or her awareness that she might have Priori Incantatem performed on her wand later, Snape wasn’t sure. Lastly, and inexplicably, there was the Riddikulus Charm, which Snape had only ever seen used for defeating Boggarts. He wondered what had happened to make her use it.     
  
Still, there was no Selective Verbalization Charm; that much was undeniable.  
  
Slughorn clapped his hands heartily and said. “Well, there we are. Fascinating, Miss Evans. I’m sure Avery will own that he owes you an apology.”    
  
Avery gave an extremely resentful shrug and mumbled something indistinguishable. Slughorn must have decided to assume that it was an apology, however, because he said cheerfully:   
  
“Well, I’m glad we got to the bottom of that. See Madam Pomfrey about those boils, won’t you, Avery? Oh, and be sure to thank your father the next time you speak to him for the crystallised pineapple he so kindly sent me.”  
  
Lily, who had been displaying Occlumency-worthy powers of self-control all this time, now hurried off before she was presented with any more temptation to laugh.  
  
Snape watched her for a while, and then, with no definite plan, and thinking he was stupid for even trying, he followed.    
  
She opened the door to the dungeon classroom where they had Potions lessons and went inside.    
  
Snape stood in the doorway, feeling eager and miserable at the same time. He hadn’t spoken to her for three months, unless you counted the endless string of apologies he’d written in their ledger.              
  
“I was going to help you,” he said, to announce his presence.  
  
Lily looked up and raised her eyebrows coolly. “You were leaving it kind of late, weren’t you?”   
  
Snape didn’t know what to say to this, so he kept silent.   
  
“Well, I don’t want your help,” she said, with a little, twisted smile. “So, next time, you can spare yourself the trouble of _thinking about it_.”   
  
“Whose wand did you use for the Selective Verbalization Charm?” he asked, trying to keep his voice casual.   
  
Lily didn’t reply, but he thought he saw a smile playing around the corners of her mouth. Taking this for encouragement, he went on:  
  
“What are you doing?”   
  
“If I tell you, will you go away?”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
She sighed and went on, in a business-like tone, “They’ve discovered a new dragon breed in Peru - a cross between a Vipertooth, and a Hungarian Horntail that somehow got sent to the wrong Reservation. It breathes poisonous fire, and nobody has discovered the Antidote, so Slughorn suggested that I work on it for a side-project. Based on the Paracelsan principle that like treats like, I’ve decided to try and make Antidote Fire.”   
  
Snape felt a bitter surge of longing. A few months ago, she would have asked for his help on something like this. For a moment, he was tormented with the idea of working with her after classes in the dungeons, talking about the properties of powdered bicorn horn and inventing ingenious new insults for James Potter.   
  
“Look,” he mumbled, glaring at the floor. “We’ve been friends forever. And you know I’m sorry - you know I didn’t mean to - .”    
  
“Why did you have to say it?” she asked angrily.   
  
“I don’t know!” he shouted. “I don’t know why I said it! I was angry. But you know I didn’t mean it. You know I think you’re - .” Snape dragged himself back from the brink of that sentence. He had to be careful what he said. He could feel the loneliness, the bitterness of the last few months looming above him. It was like a tidal wave, poised to break over him and drag him out to sea. He saw Roger Davies kissing her outside her front door, heard the sickening laughter of the crowd down by the lake, felt the oppressive silence of the nights he had spent reading alone in the library or in abandoned classrooms, sitting up late until he was almost asleep at his desk, so that he wouldn’t have to think about what he’d lost. Lily could draw this poison out of him. He needed her. And he had the wildest urge, right at this moment, to tell her so.  
  
Lily’s eyebrows were raised, but her expression had softened. She seemed suspended between scepticism and sympathy.    
  
He had to look away from her softened expression to collect his thoughts, and it was then that he saw it. A spider was crawling across her ledger on the desk in front of her; it moved slowly and stickily, as though it was wading through jam.  
  
“Lily, shut your eyes,” he said suddenly.   
  
Lily raised her eyebrows still further.   
  
“There’s a spider,” he pressed on. “Shut your eyes; I’ll get rid of it.”   
  
And, incredibly, she shut them. Snape felt almost dizzy with relief. She still trusted him. Everything was not lost.    
  
But the next moment, everything was lost. He knew that instantly, even though it took him a while to work out exactly what had happened.  
  
Something black and heavy hurtled past his ear and struck Lily on the side of the head, with a sickening, ringing sound that bounced off the dungeon walls. And then another sound echoed through the dungeon, and through every nerve and sinew in his body; a high, hysterical laugh.   
  
Bellatrix Black was standing in the doorway, convulsed with laughter. Snape had never seen her looking so mad. “I can’t believe she fell for that,” she whispered ecstatically, and then darted from the room, as though happiness had made her weightless.   
  
Snape looked back at Lily, his brain crawling torturously towards the realisation of what had happened. He hoped that when he understood it, he would at least be able to move.   
  
She was stirring. There was a lot of blood and dust, but she was stirring. She wasn’t dead.     
  
“What in Heaven’s name is going on here?”   
  
Snape was so relieved to see Lily move that he didn’t immediately register the terrible trouble he was in. Professor McGonagall’s voice was not exactly soothing, though, and he couldn’t help starting guiltily at the sound of it.   
  
Without waiting for an answer, Professor McGonagall swept past him and helped Lily up from the floor. “Miss Evans?” she said loudly. “Can you hear me?”   
  
Lily said something that sounded like ‘ess, presser’. There was blood pouring down the side of her face.   
  
“Can you walk to the Hospital Wing?” McGonagall asked.  
  
Lily blinked blood out of her eyes, nodded, and then half-sank to the floor. McGonagall caught her and pulled her to her feet again.    
  
“I’ll take her - ,” Snape began urgently, but McGonagall raised her eyebrows.  
  
“Yes, I was not actually born yesterday, Mr. Snape,” she said irritably. “I will take her.”  
  
“I didn’t do it,” he said. His throat felt very tight. He couldn’t take his eyes off Lily’s blood-stained face. “It was Bellatrix Black, she - ,”  
  
“Well, it will be easy enough to find out,” McGonagall said crisply. “Give me your wand.”   
  
Snape fumbled in his pocket for his wand. His hands were shaking.   
  
“We will see whether the last spell you performed was a Levitation Charm,” McGonagall continued.   
  
Snape, holding out his wand to her, suddenly drew it back.   
  
“The last spell that I performed?” he repeated.    
  
Professor McGonagall raised her eyebrows. “Priori Incantatem, if you prefer the technical vocabulary, Snape.”   
  
“I - I don’t want you to do that,” he stammered.   
  
“And why not?”   
  
The last spell he had performed had been an Unforgivable Curse. This meant immediate expulsion, if not arrest, but he might be able to talk his way out of being expelled if he admitted to attacking Lily. In fact, it wouldn’t have cost him a moment’s hesitation, if it hadn’t been Lily, if he hadn’t been so close to being her friend again, and if she hadn’t looked so horribly injured, white and swaying and insensible as she was at McGonagall’s side.     
  
“Because I did it,” Snape said quietly, looking at the floor.  
  
McGonagall surveyed him over her spectacles with suspicious dislike. He thought the dislike must have been stronger than the suspicion, however, because she didn’t ask him any more questions.   
  
“Meet me in my office in ten minutes, Mr. Snape. We will discuss your punishment then.” She didn’t wait for a response, but turned abruptly and said, her voice suddenly gentle, “come along, Miss Evans.”   
  
  
Lily spent the rest of the afternoon in the Hospital Wing. She felt enormously cheerful, and wondered whether this was because of the concussion or the thrilling, liberating feeling of total misery. Her heart was broken, and anything that happened now was just a vaguely amusing epilogue. Whatever happened next, the characters she cared about were already dead.  
  
She was suddenly interested in everything; she had five visitors that afternoon, and asked them questions as though she was interviewing them for Witch Weekly. She found out that Mary Macdonald wanted to be a Quidditch referee, Meg Valance had once kissed both Regulus and Sirius Black on the same night, and Margot Holloway (cold, clinical Margot Holloway!) had been entered for a beauty pageant as an eight year-old girl.  
  
“How did it go?” Lily had asked, leaning her cheek on her hand; she was unnaturally flushed, her green eyes over-bright, but if Margot noticed anything unusual in this feverish interest, she didn’t say so.   
  
“I came second,” Margot said pleasantly. The memory didn’t appear to cause her any discomfort. “To Narcissa Black, actually.”  
  
“Really?”   
  
“Yes. Her nose was straighter, apparently.”   
  
Lily summoned a mental image of Narcissa Black. She wouldn’t have called her nose straight exactly, because it was permanently wrinkled with disgust, but that might just have been because she was near Lily. To most pure-blood Slytherins, Lily was the visual equivalent of a slap in the face. Presumably, when it had nothing to aggravate it, Narcissa’s nose could be as straight as it pleased.   
  
“Well,” Lily said at length, “she’s pretty in a very obvious way. I think beauty should be interesting. I mean, Narcissa Black’s hair is very boring. It’s not light and floaty like yours.”        
  
Margot tilted her head to one side. “That’s very nice of you,” she said, without the barest trace of a smile. “I privately didn’t agree with the judges either.”     
  
“Were you disappointed?” Lily asked.   
  
“No. I think perhaps father was. But I found the whole experience - .”  
  
“Fascinating,” Lily finished her sentence for her, with a broad smile.      
  
After Margot had left, James Potter trooped in to the Hospital Wing, covered with mud, and surrounded by his usual crowd of sycophantic Quidditch fans (nine this time, plus a cat, which Peter Pettigrew, in all the excitement, seemed to have forgotten he was holding. He was certainly waving his arms with the kind of reckless abandon that people who knew that they were holding cats did not generally use).  
  
Lily watched as Madam Pomfrey began shrieking ineffectually about the mud, and Meg Valance launched into a description of the spectacular Quidditch move which had resulted in Potter’s injury.   
  
Had either been listening to the other, the altercation would have been over in a few seconds. As it was, it took at least five minutes for each to make the other understand the importance of what they were saying. James Potter was leaning casually against the wall and making no effort to help. Lily realised after a few minutes that he was staring at her, and promptly buried her head in the latest issue of Witch Weekly. She always tried not to look at James Potter on principle, because she didn’t think he should be encouraged.   
  
Eventually, Madam Pomfrey made everyone other than Potter leave, and promised Pettigrew that she would report his animal cruelty to Professor Dumbledore, if he didn’t start being more careful. She stormed into her office to mix up a potion which, Lily knew from the expression on her face, she would not be sweetening. After a few moments, Potter made his way over to Lily’s bedside and said, in his most casual voice, “Hi, Evans.”     
  
“Hello,” she said cheerfully, looking up from her magazine. “What are you in for? Quidditch again?”   
  
“Bludger dislocated my shoulder,” he said grimly.   
  
“Ouch,” Lily replied, because she was clearly supposed to.   
  
James beamed at her. “Still caught the Snitch, though,” he added, quite unnecessarily, because he had been playing with it for the past five minutes.   
  
“Of course you did,” she replied, with an indulgent smile.   
  
Misinterpreting the smile as encouragement, James began to describe the circumstances of his injury to her. “I was diving for the Snitch – I must have been fifty feet up – and it was about two inches off the ground. It was a sheer vertical drop. Wilkes had given up completely.”   
  
“Wilkes?”   
  
“The Slytherin Seeker,” James explained, “but, as I was pulling out of the dive, the Bludger hit my shoulder and knocked me off course. I leapt off my broom, dived for the Snitch, grabbed it, rolled and landed on the floor, right at Madam Hooch’s feet.”   
  
“Oh,” Lily said, politely. Then, feeling that more was required of her, and not trusting herself to add any insights on Quidditch technique, she said, “do you practise in the holidays?”   
  
“Yeah, all the time. Why?”   
  
“It’s just that there are no muggle-borns on the House Teams, and I was wondering whether it’s because they can’t practise outside school. Their parents’ houses don’t have muggle-repelling charms, obviously, and most of them don’t have their own brooms. I was thinking of asking Dumbledore if we could set up a Quidditch club in the summer holidays, so that muggle-born students could practise.”  
  
Potter’s eyes were shining. “Just for muggle-borns?” he asked tentatively.   
  
“Of course not. In fact…” Lily hesitated. “I know I could get a lot more people to come if I said that you were involved.”   
  
Fierce joy rose in James Potter; it robbed him temporarily of the power of speech. For a while, he just grinned stupidly, until Lily’s embarrassment prompted her to add:   
  
“And the rest of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, of course, if you think they’d be interested,” she murmured, blushing. “We could have hot chocolate when it got too dark to play. Hagrid – you know he gets lonely in the summer holidays – even said he’d do some baking.”  
  
“Yeah…” James faltered slightly, then rushed on, seemingly determined, “maybe you could get Davies to bring the Ravenclaw team along.”   
  
“Actually, we’ve split up.”   
  
James dropped the Snitch. It fell a few inches, then fluttered away, looking distinctly ruffled, to hover by the window.    
  
“I’m sorry,” he said, unconvincingly.   
  
“That’s OK,” she turned her eyes back to the cover of Witch Weekly. Gilderoy Lockhart, dressed in his school robes, was beaming up at her with an unwavering smile, brandishing a stunned gnome heroically above his head. Lily remembered that Potter’s ex-girlfriend, the extraordinarily dim-witted Malificent, had gone off with Gilderoy Lockhart, and she felt warmer towards Potter. Somehow, these sympathetic thoughts caused her head to hurt, so she opened the magazine, in search of further distractions.      
  
Perceiving that Lily didn’t want to go into details, and much too happy to require any, James said: “So, what are you in for?”   
  
Lily blinked. She had almost succeeded in forgetting. “Concussion,” she said simply.   
  
“Oh, I wondered why you were talking to me,” he said cheerfully.   
  
She laughed. “I’m alright now,” she lied. “Madam Pomfrey wants to keep me in overnight.”   
  
“How’d you get concussion?”   
  
Lily bit her lip. “I got hit on the head with a cauldron,” she said, as though she was confessing to some very stupid mistake.    
  
“What?”  
  
“It was my own stupid fault,” she went on, laughing. “I let my guard down in front of a Slytherin.” She settled back on her pillows and looked up at the ceiling, feeling as though a Dementor was sewn up inside her chest, sucking parasitically at her heart.   
  
“Still, it would take several hundred cauldrons to the head to make me think I wanted to leave Hogwarts,” she added, without smiling.   
  
“Who did it?” James asked casually.  
  
Lily looked back at him, her eyes narrowed. “You’re just curious, right? Because he’s already got detention, I don’t think he needs any kind of extra-curricula punishment.”    
  
“Oh yeah, I’m sure he’s learned his lesson.” James said sarcastically.  
  
“And I don’t want Gryffindor to lose any points on account of one stupid Slytherin,” she persisted.    
  
“Who was it?” he asked again.   
  
Thankfully, Madam Pomfrey chose that moment to come over and fix James’ dislocated shoulder. He very bravely suppressed a moan of pain when she cracked his shoulder back into place, but he couldn’t help spitting out the foul-tasting potion he was instructed to drink. Madam Pomfrey relented, grudgingly, and went to fetch some sugar.   
  
Lily could feel James’ eyes on her in the silence, which was very distracting, but did her best to ignore it by immersing herself in her magazine. When Madam Pomfrey had come back with the sweetened potion, ensured that he drank all of it, and promised him that if he didn’t take better care of his limbs, she would soon start refusing to treat him, James went back over to Lily’s bed.   
  
“Hey, Evans - .”  
  
“Lily,” she said absently.   
  
“What?”   
  
“Call me Lily.”   
  
James stared at her. She wondered if she was once again revealing her ignorance of the wizarding world. Perhaps wizards showed friendliness by referring to each other by their last names.   
  
James seemed to be trying to remember what he had been about to say. “Um… Do you want me to go to the library and get you a book? If you’re going to be here all night, I mean… I’m going anyway,” he assured her.   
  
“Oh… OK, yeah. If you’re going anyway.”   
  
He was grinning at her again. Lily found this very disconcerting. Mostly to avoid his gaze, she scribbled the title and shelf-mark of Sympathetic Magic on some parchment and handed it to him. She didn’t feel like reading anything unfamiliar. Her head still hurt, but even this sensation was more curious than painful. She felt as though she was turning into Margot Holloway. She even hoped that it was going to last.


	16. Spilt Milk, Part Three

Snape had a recurring nightmare that always set upon him when he was anxious, or when he’d been practising Occlumency too much. He supposed, whenever he was rational enough to think about it, that it was his emotions trying to reassert their influence over him. It only made him work harder to suppress them.     
  
He stood in a circle of Death Eaters, in a cavernous hall of snowy white marble that reminded him of Gringotts. A girl was stumbling against the walls of the circle, being pushed back into the centre by the hooded Death Eaters. They were jeering, spitting, baying for blood. The girl was frightened; her strong, ragged breathing could be heard even above the screeching of the Death Eaters.   
  
Then one of the hooded members of the circle stepped forward (as Snape had got older, he’d realised that the face under the hood, which at first he hadn’t recognised, was Lucius Malfoy’s). Malfoy punched the girl, who then fell back against Bella. Bellatrix Black looked older in this dream than Snape knew her to be. She had a shadowy face, raven-feather hair and scuffed leather ankle-boots. She kicked the girl in the face, and the girl reeled from Death Eater to Death Eater, each of them punching, slapping, kicking her away from them, towards another of their fellows. It was like a horrible game of pass-the-parcel.        
  
As with Malfoy, Snape had gradually grown to recognise the Death Eaters that were hurting her. There was Nott, Avery, Regulus Black, then a man with an impressive moustache whom Snape had never met. This man knocked the girl towards Snape, who saw her face for the first time (though he had known it was Lily from the icy fear coursing through him, the wine-red hair that was being tossed through the air as she stumbled from Death Eater to Death Eater). Her lip was bleeding, her left eye was puffy and swollen. She didn’t appear to recognise him. Suddenly everyone was watching him, and he was terrified – terrified of being found out, even though every punch and kick she endured had been felt by Snape with shuddering agony.   
  
He was paralysed – and here he usually woke up, still in the grip of that terrible, inexplicable fear, still (despite the familiarity of the dream) half-believing that it had been real, that he would pull back the curtains of his four-poster to see her lying, bleeding, at his feet, with the circle of Death Eaters screeching in triumph around her. He would lie in a cold sweat, staring at the canopy of the four-poster, as his breathing gradually returned to normal, his heart-rate slowed down. The desire to see her alive, well, smiling, burned inside him. Sometimes it would carry him as far as the Slytherin common room, where Regulus would spring out of his winged armchair beside the fire, spouting proverbs and insults, and causing Snape to return at least partially to his senses.   
  
But the nightmare was getting worse the more he studied the Dark Arts. As he found his brain saturated with various poisons, curses, and dark creatures, without the grounding influence of Lily (with her smiles, worries and irreverent jokes), he became more and more susceptible to the strange dream.    
  
And tonight, he couldn’t wake up.   
  
He found himself, as usual, staring into her pale, swollen face, trying to discern her eyes through the blood and bruises. The usual howling, taunting, cajoling from the Death Eaters followed, as she swayed on the spot in front of him; the usual fear jolted his insides like an electric current. Then slowly, mechanically, as though he was being Imperiused, he drew his arm back and hit her.        
  
This last blow seemed to cut the thread that she’d been hanging by. She fell backwards onto the floor, her skin as white as the marble beneath her, her hair spread out in a ragged red halo around her head.   
  
Except that it was spreading further, Snape realised. It was as though her hair was growing: dark red locks were snaking like tendrils across the cracked marble floor.   
  
With a thrill of horror, he realised that it was blood, trickling away from her head in little crimson rivers. So similar were the colours, he couldn’t tell where her hair ended and the blood began, except that the hair still retained its stained-glass glow, but feebly.     
  
Snape jolted awake. He sat up, staring around in the darkness, his breathing fast and shallow. For a few minutes, he didn’t know where he was. The sudden stillness was worse than the shouts and jeers of the Death Eaters. He tried to catch his breath, fighting the hot waves of nausea that swept over him.   
  
He couldn’t believe that she wasn’t dead.  
  
Little by little, the real world asserted itself. He was back in the Slytherin dormitory, listening to Avery’s irregular, gurgling snores. And Lily was in the Hospital Wing, sleeping off a concussion. (That part, unfortunately, had not been a dream). Lucius Malfoy, he remembered, was on the continent, trying to persuade the teachers at Durmstrang to join with the Dark Lord.    
  
And he had had this dream hundreds of times before.  
  
Never like that, though.      
  
He was sweating and shivering at the same time. And he couldn’t stop thinking about her corpse-white skin, her feebly glowing hair.     
  
Trying to catch his breath, he crept out of bed and across the dormitory, knocking a few things over in his panic, and ignoring the grunts and shouts that followed these crashes.   
  
He had to see her.   
  
Though normally a very rational person, Snape never had any trouble believing the worst. He’d had good reason to be this way. Torments, humiliation and disappointment had given him a very fatalistic imagination.  
  
And hope was treacherous. Snape had hoped for the first three weeks of the summer; it had soothed and flattered him, kept him in a sort of sickly stasis, prevented him from taking his revenge on Black and Potter - and the moment when hope had been wrenched out of him had been the worst moment of his life. He never wanted to feel like that again. He never wanted to be fooled. If you were going to hope, that hope had better be unassailable, because the loss of hope was the most painful thing in the world.   
  
There was a wizard proverb that Regulus Black was always reciting: “Don’t hope; take.” And that was how Snape intended to live his life from now on.   
  
He crept down the wet stone stairs leading to the dormitory, trying not to think about his dream. He was half-way across the Slytherin common-room before a voice boomed out behind him; a voice that would have been chilling if the tone hadn’t been so insolent.        
  
“Can’t sleep, Severus?”  
  
Snape started. For some moments, he stared at Regulus Black without the smallest glimmer of recognition, and Regulus, with his usual look of cheerful sarcasm, took in Snape’s wild, white, tormented face.   
  
Then, slowly, Snape said: “No. I have something to do. I have to go out.”   
  
And he walked straight past Regulus towards the portrait hole.   
  
“Um… You do know that we’re not allowed out at night?” Regulus asked tentatively.    
  
Snape turned around, fixing Regulus with a cold, haughty stare and half-hoping for an excuse to fight him. “Yes,” he said simply. “Is that a problem for you?”   
  
Regulus looked down at the Prefect badge gleaming on his chest, and then up at Snape‘s fierce, chalk-white face. “Maybe not. Depends how reasonable you‘re prepared to be.”   
  
“I’ll show you how reasonable I’m prepared to be,” Snape replied, raising his wand.   
  
Regulus held up his hands. He had an unwavering smile that reminded Snape of Gilderoy Lockhart. “OK, OK, I can see that you’re serious about this. I only want one thing. One little thing, and I know you can arrange it for me. I want to meet the Dark Lord.”   
  
Snape’s white lips curled into a contemptuous smile. “Yes, he’s fond of meeting psychologically-damaged fifteen year-old wizards. I’m sure he’ll be delighted.”   
  
Regulus seemed to have been expecting this. His insolent smile broadened. “Ah, but I have important information for him.”   
  
“I am in a bit of a hurry, Regulus,” said Snape. “Perhaps we could plan your suicide later?”   
  
“It is important,” Regulus insisted. “He’ll want to see me. Just tell him it’s about my uncle, the Minister for Magic.”   
  
“And what makes you think I can arrange for you to meet him?”   
  
“You’re friends with Lucius Malfoy.”  
  
Snape sighed. He was tired. Every inch of him was aching as though it had been beaten. “We’ll see. Now, I’m going. If Slughorn comes by, you haven’t seen me.”   
  
He made for the portrait hole, but Regulus stopped him again.   
  
“Severus? Stay away from the fourth-floor corridor. The carpet’s been rigged with Sticking Charms. It‘s for the Gryffindor Quidditch team.”  
  
Snape almost smiled. “I‘ll bear that in mind. Good work,” he added, as he turned to leave.      
  
  
Lily was sleeping peacefully, her lips slightly parted, with Sympathetic Magic clutched to her chest like a teddy bear. She had let her dark red hair fall over her right eye, as in her moments of shyness. It was a very, very painful sight.   
For a moment, Snape just looked at her, feeling truly calm for the first time in days. Maybe months.   
  
He just had time to register that she had a deep cut on her arm, held together with Spellotape, before a hand was clasped over his mouth and he was dragged out of the room by something he couldn’t see.   
  
He knew who this was, of course, but waited until he had cleared the hospital wing, before kicking out at his invisible assailant. He felt his foot hit something hard; there was a satisfying crunch, and Snape found that he had been released. He dropped to the floor, and felt a curse pass over his head. He could smell singed hair but seemed to be otherwise uninjured, so he pulled out his wand and ducked behind a stone pillar, waiting for Potter to make the next move.      
  
“Got it in for her, haven’t you?” James Potter breathed lividly, stepping out from under the Invisibility Cloak, his wand raised. “What’d she ever do to you, Snivellus?”   
  
“It’s more the fact that she exists,” Snape spat back.   
  
Potter raised his wand, but Snape had anticipated him. He ducked out from behind the pillar and hit Potter with a curse that slammed him into the wall at the far end of the hall. His wand clattered to the floor some feet away.   
  
“What’s it to you, anyway?” Snape hissed. He could feel hatred eating away at his guts like acid. “She thinks you’re an idiot. You make her sick, remember? Strutting around like you own the place, cursing people just because you can...”   
  
He knew that Potter remembered this little speech just as vividly as he did, though for different reasons.   
  
“Shut up, Snivellus!”      
  
Snape’s black eyes glittered as he advanced on him, wand raised. “That’s why you like her, isn’t it, Potter?” he said softly. “Because you can’t have her. Because she’s the one Gryffindor who isn’t fooled by you. You pathetic little brat!”   
  
Snape had expected Potter to lunge for his wand, but he didn’t. He lunged at Snape, hitting him round the middle. Struggling, they both fell backwards down the stairs that led to the Hospital Wing.   
  
When they hit the bottom, Snape struggled to his feet, treading hard on Potter’s hand, with a crunch that echoed unpleasantly in the silent corridor.  
  
Potter yelled, took a fistful of Snape’s robes and pulled him back down onto the floor, twisting his arm painfully behind him.  
  
Suddenly, he let go and clamped a hand over Snape’s mouth. “Shut up,” he breathed. “Shut up, Snivellus. Listen!”  
  
There was a light coming round the bend of the corridor, and two voices were whispering urgently. One, Snape recognised as Dumbledore’s. The other was low, mournful and unfamiliar.    
  
“… Sure it was him, Henry? What did he look like?”  
  
The two figures rounded the corner. Snape and Potter promptly had a silent fight about who would get the best hiding place in the shadowy alcove that bordered the corridor, which Potter won. Snape crouched instead behind a statue of a leering goblin.   
  
The second man was the Divination teacher, Professor Caladrius. He kept looking over his shoulder as he spoke.   
  
“I don’t know,” Caladrius muttered. “He can make himself invisible. I didn’t see him, I sensed him.”   
  
“How?” Dumbledore asked.   
  
“The usual way.”   
  
Dumbledore looked at him sharply. “You mean you had a vision about him?”   
  
“For God’s sake, keep this to yourself, Dumbledore,” Caladrius hissed. “Can you imagine what he’d do to me?”   
  
“Yes.”   
  
“How, in the name of Merlin and all his facial hair, did he get into the grounds?”       
  
“I don’t know, Henry. I suggest you wake Professor McGonagall on your way to bed.”   
  
“You don’t want me to help you search for him?”   
  
“I think it would be best to keep you out of his way. If he has indeed discovered the nature of your visions then you are in terrible danger.”   
  
Caladrius stopped suddenly and shivered. He shut his eyes, and pressed his hand over them, as though he were in terrible pain.   
  
“What is it, Henry?” Dumbledore asked urgently.   
  
“Students, I think,” he said. His teeth were gritted. “Two of them, mercifully.” He pointed up the corridor to where Potter and Snape were crouched in hiding: “Over there.”   
  
Dumbledore had already lit his wand tip and directed its beam into the shadows at the edge of the corridor. He smiled warmly, if rather distractedly, and nodded at them: “James… Severus. I do not wish to know why you are out of your beds. Since you are here, you may as well make yourselves useful. Go and wake the teachers. We have an intruder in the grounds.”


	17. Spilt Milk, Part Four

Snape was standing at the top of the Astronomy Tower, scowling at the sky.    
  
It was an unwholesome kind of day - the weather looked as though it was working itself up for a storm, but it hadn’t quite got there yet, and so the clouds had turned a queasy-looking yellow and were hanging low over the castle, wheezing with half-hearted thunder.     
  
The door to the Tower opened, and Regulus Black came over to join him, grinning in that cheerful, insolent way of his, as though they were best friends.   
  
“Alright, Sev?”  
  
“Don’t call me that,” Severus replied, without looking at him.   
  
“Fair enough,” said Regulus affably. “My mum calls me Reggie, and I hate that. I used to know a girl who called me ‘Regulars’. Muggle-born. Couldn’t understand a word of Latin, always mis-pronouncing her incantations. I swelled her tongue up with an Engorgement Charm in the end. She nearly choked to death.”   
  
Unwillingly, Snape looked up from his contemplation of the sickening sky. “What do you want?” he said.      
  
Regulus Black had mossy green eyes and pointed teeth. Other than that, he looked almost exactly like his brother - all heavy, brooding eyebrows and romantically-cascading dark hair. Girls still giggled and swooned when he walked past, but they were nervous giggles and terrified swoons. There was something unsettling about him.   
  
Still, Regulus was sufficiently similar to his brother for Snape to clench his fists involuntarily at the sight of him.    
  
Regulus was used to it. Snape was always angry. In fact, he would have been more uncomfortable if Snape had looked happy - that generally meant that he was contemplating practising some new curse on you.   
  
In any case, Regulus had an ability to be comfortable with almost anyone, simply because he was much too arrogant to entertain the notion that his company could ever be unpleasant.   
  
“Did you get caught last night?” he asked cheerfully.   
  
“Yes and no,” Snape replied.   
  
“They’re saying the Dark Lord was in the grounds somewhere.”   
  
“Are they?”   
  
Snape was still seething about Potter. What had he been doing by Lily’s bedside in the Hospital Wing, under an invisibility cloak?   
  
He’d always thought that cloak shouldn’t be allowed. Every way he looked at it, it was unjust: it was simply too easy to lurk in changing rooms and showers, watching girls. And a teenage boy who hadn’t thought of putting the invisibility cloak to this use didn’t deserve to own an invisibility cloak.   
  
“But you didn’t see him?” Regulus prompted.   
  
Snape snapped out of his reverie. “Listen, if you’re still going on about meeting the Dark Lord, you’re going to have to give me something a little bit more concrete than the fact that your uncle’s Minister for Magic.”   
  
Regulus was twirling his wand absent-mindedly between his fingers. He had a tendency to do this.   
  
“What would you say,” he began, with the air of one cradling a dramatic bombshell, “if I told you I could get the Minister for Magic under the Imperius Curse?”   
  
Snape raised his eyebrows. “I’d probably say ‘You’re lying’. If I was feeling nice. And I must warn you, Regulus, I’m not.”   
  
Regulus’ insolent smile flickered for a moment, but he hitched it back in place. “Can you at least arrange for me to meet Lucius Malfoy?”  
  
“Talk to him yourself.” Snape replied.   
  
“You’re not in a very good mood today, are you?” Regulus asked perceptively.  
  
Snape gave him a withering stare, but Regulus was adept at not taking hints.       
  
“Why don’t you tell me about it?” he asked. “After all, a problem shared is a problem halved.”   
  
“Regulus,” Snape said patiently, “you’re doing it again.”  
  
Regulus had been hit over the head with a very powerful magical object in his second year (thrown, it was widely believed, by his brother, Sirius), and he’d never been quite right since.   
  
The statue that had nearly split his head open all those years ago had guarded the entrance to Dumbledore’s office before the present gargoyles had been recruited. It was a bust of a bald man with a nobly-lined face, wearing a Laurel Wreath, who would shout out proverbs or advice in a shrill voice to anybody who passed by. He was called the Random Wisdom Generator.    
  
At first, everyone had thought that Regulus had escaped the attack with only a concussion and a few scratches but, as the days had gone by, they had realised that the collision had done him permanent damage. Somehow, he had absorbed the Wisdom Generator’s power. He was insuppressibly wise. And he had no control over it.    
  
It was a regular feature of classes to hear Regulus shout out:  
  
“Don’t count your dragons before they’re hatched,” or, “No use crying over spilt potion.’   
  
Snape had once passed him in the corridor, and distinctly heard him mutter: “Pleasure is misleading, but you know exactly where you stand with pain. Pain doesn’t lie to you, it doesn’t flatter you, it doesn’t let you forget that you’re just a man.”  
  
Thinking that he should convey this sentiment to the compulsively sadistic Bellatrix, Snape had hurried on his way, unwilling to be drawn into a one-sided conversation, in which proverbs would be thrown at him like missiles.  
Regulus blinked and shook himself. “Sorry,” he said.   
  
“See, what are you going to do if you start talking like that around the Dark Lord?” Snape asked peevishly, but he stopped, because his thoughts had strayed, as usual, to his revenge on Potter, and an idea had just occurred to him.     
  
“You know you’re always sneaking around, setting traps for the Gryffindor Quidditch team?” he asked urgently. “How come Potter hasn’t caught you? He’s got that map that tells him where everyone is.”    
  
Regulus grinned. “Set up a meeting for me with Lucius Malfoy.”   
  
Snape suppressed his impatience and managed a shrug. “All right,” he said. “Your funeral. Now, how do you fool the map?”   
  
“Two ways. Number one, use somebody he’s not interested in, somebody that he won’t be watching, to do whatever it is you want done: i.e. not Severus Snape or Regulus Black - and I wouldn’t be that red-haired Gryffindor girl, either - he’s always watching her.” Regulus paused. “In fact, if you could get her into trouble - maybe lock her in a room with a troll or something - he’d probably go charging off to rescue her, and you could - ,”  
  
“Yeah, what’s the second way?” Severus interrupted.   
  
It took Regulus a little while to respond; he seemed to be still imagining the scene with Lily and the troll locked in a room together. He was easily distracted. Snape nudged him. “Oh,” he said, shaking himself again. “Number Two, just make yourself Unplottable. The Charm can be modified to work on people as well as places. Do that, and you won’t show up on the map, even though you’ll be visible to everyone else.”    
  
Snape blinked. It was laughably simple. Why hadn’t he thought of it?  
  
They turned suddenly, as Professor Caladrius opened the door to the Astronomy Tower, saw the two of them on the battlements, shuddered, and then shut the door again.   
  
A silence followed this bizarre scene, in which Regulus twirled his wand and Snape started thinking, again, about Potter’s lurking presence beside Lily’s bed.    
  
“You want to know something about that Caladrius?” Regulus whispered, when he was sure that the teacher was out of ear-shot.   
  
“Not really.”   
  
“I have him for Divination,” Regulus went on, again unable to fathom that his conversation could be anything but fascinating. “He was acting really weird around me in class - wincing whenever I came near, backing away, that kind of stuff, as though he was allergic to me or something. So I asked Slughorn what his problem was.” Regulus grinned proudly, “he’s a mine of information, that Slughorn - you have to butter him up a bit first, of course, but give him a box of crystallised pineapple and a few compliments and he’s putty in your hands. Apparently, Professor Caladrius only has visions about the way people are going to die. All he has to do is stand near them, and he sees their deaths.”  
  
Snape froze for a second; he’d just remembered something Dumbledore had said last night before he’d noticed his two students in the corridor:    
  
“If he has indeed discovered the nature of your visions, then you are in terrible danger.”   
  
“That’s why the Dark Lord was looking for Caladrius,” Severus murmured, forgetting for a moment that Regulus was there. “He’s obsessed with conquering death. Caladrius would be able to tell him whether or not he ever succeeds.”   
  
Regulus was silent for a moment. Then he said:  
  
“Severus! We could bring Caladrius to him.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“Well, think about it. Whenever I go near him, he’s essentially incapacitated. It wouldn’t be too hard to -,”   
  
“Smuggle him out of Hogwarts, right under Dumbledore’s nose? Yes, it would. You underestimate him. Especially now he knows that the Dark Lord’s after Caladrius. He’ll be watching him like Mad-Eye Moody watching a bartender who’s fixing him a drink.”   
  
Regulus was silent again. “We could think of something…” he muttered.   
  
“I’ve got my own problems right now,” Severus replied decisively. “I haven’t got time to go kidnapping teachers.”   
  
“What are your problems, deciding how best to kill James Potter?” Regulus asked impatiently. “You’re not looking at the big picture. You want to _be_ somebody, don’t you? This is the way to do it.”    
  
“There are less suicidal ways,” Severus replied.   
  
“They would also be less spectacular.”   
  
Snape gave him a sneering smile. “You Quidditch players!” he exclaimed.    
  
He was quiet for a moment, looking out over the castle grounds. “Next month,” he said. “Ask me again next month, after the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff Quidditch match.”   
  
“What’s going to be different next month?”   
  
“Everything,” said Snape.


	18. Spilt Milk, Part Five

The archives of Azkaban contained confessions: shelf upon shelf stacked with bottled memories - catalogued and alphabetized, kept underground in the prison’s basement, inside the cliff on which the bulk of the black-stone building perched.  
  
They were guarded by a Dementor thinner and more ragged than the others: the Archivist. There was a glimmer of happiness, a trace of nourishment, about the memories - from the exhilarated or self-righteous feelings of criminals when they remembered their crimes, or perhaps because the act of remembering was itself life-affirming, in a place like Azkaban. Giving the confessions was probably the last happiness the prisoners ever felt.   
  
At any rate, a Dementor could live on them. The Archivist was usually a weak or wounded Dementor (for a Dementor could be permanently injured by a Patronus), not strong enough to draw the happiness out of living humans, forced to hang around human creations, inventions, things that still vibrated with human emotions. You could find starving Dementors in deserted museums or libraries, scavenging on the traces of human feelings left there. Their black robes gradually became grey and ragged, fuzzy around the edges, as though they had been ruined in the wash - they became less sharply defined, until they grew translucent, and eventually their molecules could not adhere together any more, and they drifted apart.    
  
The Confessions had to be given, but they were never examined by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. If they attested to the criminals’ innocence, nobody ever knew. Only the Dementors ever saw them, unless the criminal’s family asked to examine them. And, even then, the criminal in question had to be dead. Memory was a volatile substance with a mind of its own. There was no telling what it could do to the susceptible.    
  
 **The Light Mark**  
  
Lily slipped out of the Hospital Wing early on the morning following her discovery of the secret chapter in _Sympathetic Magic_. Streams of students were arriving with boils, petrified limbs and furry faces, on account of bitter reprisals or high-spirited celebrations following the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch match, and Madam Pomfrey was too busy tutting furiously at her new patients to notice Lily leave.   
  
She didn’t want to stay to have the cut on her arm healed. She had a childish desire to keep it as a reminder of the wonderful things she had seen the night before, and of all the difficult things it meant she now had to live with. Because, when you’re trying to steel yourself to do something brave, it’s important to remember precedent.   
  
Not only did she now have a lot of homework to catch up on, but she had to stop being afraid of spiders and forget Severus Snape. Both were essential if she wanted to maintain her self-respect.   
  
She thought of asking Madam Pomfrey whether she had ever discovered the secret chapter in _Sympathetic Magic_. After all, before the malice of a hundred teenagers hexing one another into oblivion had driven her to distraction, she must have been a compassionate girl, just the kind to spill her blood in pity or weep with love.  
  
But the circumstances had probably been different. Lily couldn’t imagine the formidable Poppy Pomfrey getting tearful over a book, or cutting herself open on account of a baby-shaped plant.   
  
In the welcome coolness of the corridors, she began to think about what she had seen the night before: the glossy, dark palm leaves and the sequinned sea, her friends all getting along with each other, and Severus standing alone in the shallow water, still on her side, still half-exasperated and half-affectionate.       
  
And now she knew she was in love with him. She was hoping that she could reason herself out of it, because loving someone who called you a Mudblood and hit you over the head with cauldrons was a very bad idea.  
  
She wondered what had happened - because he had cared for her at one point, she was sure of it. Perhaps his Slytherin friends had finally convinced him she was a worthless mudblood. Perhaps he’d realised that a friendship with a muggle-born would hinder his career - because he was ambitious, she had always known that; he wanted to be important and respected.   
  
It was a shame that the things he had to do to win everyone else’s respect were the very things that made him lose hers.      
  
But Lily wasn’t going to let the present poison the past. He would always be a part of her, she had seen that last night. She would always love the man he was, even if he was no longer that man. She was not going to compromise. It would be hard living without his friendship, but she could do it. She was a Gryffindor.   
  
She got to the Great Hall in time for breakfast. She heard a few sniggers from the Slytherin table, but walked straight on without looking, holding her head up as high as her ebbing concussion would permit.  
  
She sat next to Meg Valance, who was scowling at the Slytherin table. “Worthless scumbags to a man,” Meg growled. “And a woman, come to that.”   
  
“Forget about it,” Lily said. She hadn’t realised how hungry she’d been. Heartbreak, contrary to everything she’d heard about it, had given her a voracious appetite. She tore at a piece of toast with her teeth; she wasn’t going to let a few mean Slytherins spoil her breakfast.   
  
“How are you feeling?”   
  
“Good,” Lily said, through a mouthful of toast.   
  
“Are you going to tell me who attacked you now?” Meg asked patiently.    
  
“I told you, I don’t know. I had my eyes closed.”   
  
“Well, it’s pretty obvious, anyway, considering that everybody at the Slytherin table is patting Snape on the back.”   
  
Lily kept her eyes on her toast. “Maybe he’s just won twenty points for Slytherin,” she suggested impassively.    
  
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he had, knowing that git Slughorn. Hitting a muggle-born with a cauldron is probably worth fifty.”   
  
Lily shook her head emphatically. “Not Slughorn. You might have been right about Snape, but you’re wrong about Slughorn.”   
  
Meg’s face softened slightly. “I wish I hadn’t been right, you know.”   
  
Lily smiled. “I know.”        
  
They were interrupted by the arrival of the post owls, one of which swooped down and landed in front of Meg, glaring at her with reproachful amber eyes, and brandishing a grand-looking letter in its beak.   
  
Meg and Lily exchanged uneasy glances.   
  
Meg’s father - no doubt going crazy in the echoing, dilapidated house of his ancestors, with only Silversmith for company - was sending his daughter daily owls about the decay of the Valance line. He kept urging her to find a male heir, as though he suspected she had been hiding one under her bed all these years.   
  
Meg responded to these letters with good-natured shrugs, but it had become clear after a few days that they were getting to her.   
  
“He’s just fretting,” she said, as she folded up this latest letter and turned back to her pumpkin juice. “I’ve told him I can do everything a male Valance can do, plus I can talk coherently and unhook a bra.”   
  
“What does he say?” Lily asked.   
  
“Says he wants me to go through all my aunt’s letters to see if there’s anything that might suggest she had an illegitimate son.”   
  
“What?” Lily asked incredulously.  
  
“It’s unlikely,” Meg agreed, shrugging. “Auntie Augustine, she - er- liked the ladies.”   
  
Lily laughed. “Does your father know?”   
  
“He sort of only hears what he wants to hear.” Meg shook the letter open again and scanned it. “And then,” she continued, with brittle brightness, “he wants me to examine Guillotine Valance’s confession in Azkaban, to see if any of her children might have survived that cannibalism episode. He says missing limbs would not put him off.”   
  
Lily choked on her pumpkin juice. “That’s pretty appalling,” she said.    
  
“That’s wizard genealogy for you,” Meg replied. “You can’t blame them. Wizard numbers have been dwindling for hundreds of years. They think we’ve inter-bred too much with muggles, and that magic is dying out.”   
  
“But that can’t be right,” Lily said, with an emphatic wave of her spoon, “because magical children can be born into muggle families. If magic was entirely genetic, that wouldn’t happen.”   
  
“You’ve heard my dad,” Meg replied, “most wizards prefer to think that it _doesn’t_ happen. They reckon you muggle-borns can only perform weak, rudimentary magic - not _real_ magic. Lucius Malfoy calls you all magical impersonators. And if there’s a really talented muggle-born,” she added, seeing Lily’s exasperated expression, “they just assume that he or she had a magical ancestor some way back, like my dad did with you.”     
  
Lily sighed. This topic of conversation made her gloomy. It also tended to make her glance over at the Slytherin table and, at all costs, she wanted to avoid that.   
  
“I didn’t know they kept confessions in Azkaban,” she said, hoping to distract herself.   
  
“Yeah. They’re never examined, though. Beats me why they do it. If the prisoner dies, and his family writes to the Ministry, they can examine the confession. But it’s not allowed to leave Azkaban.”   
  
“So you’re allowed to go and see it?”   
  
“Dad’s made an appointment for me,” Meg said - and again, there was a weary edge to her cheerfulness. “I have to go see Idris Mulligan - the Azkaban Liaison Officer. She’s a friend of the family. Completely batty, but the Dementors don’t seem to bother her, so she’s a useful person to have around.”   
  
“Why don’t they bother her?”   
  
“She’s sort of like a Patronus. She doesn’t have any unhappy memories to relive, so the Dementors can’t affect her. And if they can’t affect her, they can’t feed off her. She’s a concentration of happiness, confidence - everything they feed on - but they can’t get their teeth into her. She’s too much of a good thing.”   
  
Meg piled sausage and egg onto her fork and added: “I expect being completely batty helps.”  
  
By the day of Meg’s appointment with Idris Mulligan, she had got into a nasty fight with a Slytherin seventh-year, and had acrid black smoke constantly pouring out of her ears (though, as she pointed out, the Slytherin had come off worse - he was an oozing mass of fur and tentacles in the corner of the hospital wing, and he could only communicate in barks). Madam Pomfrey insisted that Meg remain in the Hospital Wing, as she was in danger of suffocating anyone who hadn’t been carefully enchanted with a Bubble-Head Charm.   
  
Lily was asked to take her place, which she was only too happy to do, because it would get her out of Potions, where Slughorn was promising, as though it were a great treat, to pair her up with Snape.   
  
“My two best students teaming up,” he’d said, clasping his hands together in rapture, “what’s to stop you from inventing a cure for Squibbery, or taking over the wizard world completely?”   
  
“Domestic squabbles?” Lily had joked uncomfortably. She could feel Severus watching her from the back of the classroom. “Unfortunately, Sir, I have to go to Azkaban. Meg Valance has an appointment there, but she’s too sick to go. Madam Pomfrey said I could go instead.”   
  
“Azkaban, eh?” Slughorn’s eyes glinted keenly. “Why’s Meg Valance supposed to go there? Don’t tell me abysmal Potions skills has become an arrestable offence?”    
  
Lily looked hurt. “It’s just not her thing, sir. She’s very good at Transfiguration.”   
  
“Yes, I know the type. No patience with _subtleties_.”  
  
Lily heard Avery suppress a snigger. She decided that this wasn’t a safe topic to pursue, so she changed the subject. “Anyway, she’s supposed to examine her great-aunt’s confession.”   
  
“The great Valance cannibal, eh? That should be interesting.” She saw Slughorn’s moustache droop a little, as his smile faded. “You be careful, young Evans; watching other people’s memories is a treacherous pastime. When you see things from the criminal’s perspective, the crime tends to disappear.”   
  
Lily promised to be careful, and stepped out into the cool dungeon corridor with considerable relief.   
  
She took the Floo Network from the fireplace in the Entrance Hall to the Azkaban Liaison Officer’s house, with a note from Meg explaining everything.  
  
Idris Mulligan turned out to be an old lady with a pointed nose, frizzy hair that wreathed her head like grey flames, and large, hazel eyes. She wore thick red lipstick, which was clotted and clumped at the corners of her mouth, making Lily think uneasily of vampires. She wore pin-striped robes and her voice was shrill and bird-like.      
  
Her cottage was crowded but fascinating. It had the curious smell - somewhere between lavender and cat litter - of old ladies’ houses everywhere, and a detritus of lace, straggly ferns, framed photographs and animal cages lay over all the surfaces.  
  
Lily made her way carefully to the table, where the largest of these cages stood. It contained a handsome bird with pastel-green plumage and a long, sweeping tail of curled feathers. The bird was twittering musically; it had a sound that made Lily think of clean, running streams and green mountains.   
  
“Oh, it’s a Fwooper,” she breathed, “how beautiful!”  
  
“What, dear?” said Idris Mulligan.   
  
“The Fwooper,” Lily repeated, raising her voice. “I’ve never seen one before.”   
  
Mrs Mulligan was too busy rummaging around on her shelves to respond. She shook a box of slug-pellets and tutted, but said nothing.    
  
“You know, you have to be careful with these, Mrs Mulligan,” Lily went on. “They need a Silencing Charm every month, or their song can cause - ,”   
  
But she stopped, because Mrs Mulligan was now trying to feed cat biscuits to the rug.   
  
“Insanity,” she finished quietly.   
  
Mrs Mulligan stroked the rug’s tassels, cooing softly. “There you are, Sniffles. You haven’t been very well, have you? No, dear. You’ve been feeling worn down.”   
  
Lily looked at Mrs Mulligan, her mouth slightly open.    
  
The old lady crumbled three more biscuits onto the rug, dusted her hands, and then looked up at Lily.   
  
“Well, if you’re ready, girl, we’d better get going. People think Dementors have no use for punctuality, but that isn’t the case. I’ve been studying their customs for all the years that I’ve been Liaison Officer to Azkaban and, I can tell you, they get highly affronted when you keep them waiting. Another thing to bear in mind,” she added, taking Lily’s arm and leading her through the sea of cages towards the fireplace, “is that they don’t like chocolate. Show chocolate to a Dementor and you won’t be able to get any sense out of them for weeks.”   
  
“Sense?” Lily asked. “But I thought they didn’t talk.”   
  
“A popular misconception. Arrogant nonsense, put about by wizards who think themselves superior to other magical creatures.”   
  
“What do they say?”   
  
“A great deal, my girl. Can’t get them to shut up, normally.”   
  
“Can anyone else understand them?”   
  
“Only me.” Mrs Mulligan sniffed. “Nobody else has had the patience to try, you see. They don’t understand. Dementors are scavengers, certainly; parasites, undoubtedly; carnivores, even. But they are beautiful creatures, as you will see.”  
  
She scattered a handful of Floo Powder into the flames, which turned emerald green and roared upwards. Mrs Mulligan pushed Lily in the small of the back and said: “You first, dear. Just say: ‘The Gate House, Azkaban.’”  
  
Lily did as she was told, and felt herself whisked away by that familiar rushing nausea.


	19. Spilt Milk, Part Six

When she landed in the fireplace and staggered forwards, Lily saw her breath steaming in front of her before she felt the cold.   
  
When she did become aware of it, the frigid air struck her like a physical blow. As she tried to steady herself, she felt it seeping through her skin and winding into her veins, so that her heartbeat only functioned to spread the coldness through her body.   
  
She felt as though she’d forgotten what warmth was. If somebody had described it to her, she would have found the concept laughable - some idiotic fantasy, told to children to keep them quiet. This was all there was.    
  
There was a rushing in her ears, as of water and, close at hand, yet oddly distorted, she heard Severus’ voice.   
  
“I don’t need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her.”   
  
Then Petunia’s high, cold laugh.   
  
“You think I care what you did at that freak school? I wish you’d stayed there. We were all happier without you.”   
  
And Avery:  
  
“Geez, Evans! Even your own kind don’t want you! How does it feel to be a freak in both worlds?”   
  
Lily tried to force open her eyes. She had expected to see snow or tundra, but there was only blackness in front of her. She wondered whether she had succeeded in opening her eyes at all.   
  
She had a dim notion that there was some kind of pressure on her shoulder, and that it wasn’t cold. But, if it wasn’t cold, she didn’t know what it could be.   
  
“It’s alright, dear,” said a voice. “I’m here with you. They generally keep their distance from me, out of respect.”   
  
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Lily could see that the dark was actually composed of figures. They were stood so close together that the grey daylight struggled to penetrate the gaps between them. They were gliding forwards, yet somehow jostling, as though greed had made them clumsy, and they were drawing deep, rattling breaths. There were no faces visible, yet Lily had the distinct impression that there was an air of great excitement about them.    
  
Her curiosity was keeping them at bay, she could see, but already she was beginning to feel a dim acceptance of their presence, already she could feel her attention wandering (no, not wandering, evaporating, for it was not transferred to something else; it was being drawn out of her by nothing).   
  
“These,” Lily cleared her throat. “These are Dementors?”   
  
“Well, what did you expect? Cornish Pixies?”   
  
Lily suddenly remembered that there was a Charm to repel Dementors. She had only ever performed it successfully at school, hundreds of miles and (it seemed) hundreds of years away from the penetrating chill of Azkaban, but she could try it.  
She couldn’t imagine happiness now, but that did not mean it didn’t exist. Lily chose to believe that she had once been happy. Maybe even twice.   
  
She knew now that the numbing cold was not all there was to feel. If it was all she felt now, if it was all she ever felt, it would still not be all there was. Even if there was no hope, there was still memory.   
  
The first thing that occurred to her (and she was very surprised that it had) was the evening she had spent playing two-aside Quidditch at the Valance House with Meg, James Potter and Sirius Black.   
  
The memory was vague and hazy, but it still sent a little jolt of excitement through her, like an electric shock. She smiled slightly and tried to peer through the haze at the scene. She remembered the resinous smell of the pine tree as she collided with it, the sting of the pine needles, the charcoal grey of the sky, Meg’s warm, barking laughter, and the feeling (less easy to pin down) that the sun would never set, that infinite time and infinite possibilities were stretched out in front of her, extending as far as the eye could see.   
  
She whispered: “Expecto Patronum” and opened her eyes.   
  
The silver doe, that bright-eyed creature that she had first seen under the stained glass windows in the Prefect’s bathroom at Hogwarts, bounded out of the end of her wand, and cantered around the lightening room.   
  
The Dementors drew back instantly.    
  
Lily could now see that they were inside the Gatehouse. It was an exterior wall that extended all around the prison. There was a door, with oak beams drawn across it to bolt it in place, that must have opened out onto the cliffs overlooking the sea. But Mrs Mulligan lead her through the door opposite.     
  
They walked out into a courtyard, carpeted with an untouched layer of snow. The sudden, glaring white made her eyes sting, and her Patronus became translucent in the sunshine, but she knew that it was there. It trotted close to her for reassurance, nuzzling its insubstantial little head against her robes.    
  
Warmth was expanding inside her again. She watched the snow crunch and glitter beneath her feet with a feeling of calm exhilaration.  
  
The prison building itself was a cube of black granite in the centre of the courtyard, stretching up so high that Lily had to crane her neck backwards to see the top.      
  
“Funny how the snow can sanitize a place,” Idris Mulligan said conversationally. “Usually, this granite fortress looks rotten. Splattered with seagull droppings. Seaweed clinging to the sides and festering in the sunlight. But today, it looks like it should be on a Christmas card. It could be Hogwarts.”   
  
The fortress did indeed look wonderful, iced with thick drifts of snow that had piled up in the corners of the slit-like windows. Lily could see pale faces pressed to the openings but Mrs Mulligan seemed keen to move on, so she didn’t question her about this.   
  
“That was rather rude, you know,” Idris Mulligan added, as they crossed the courtyard. “I never found a Patronus necessary in my duties. Shows a lack of trust. Very un-diplomatic.”   
  
Lily stared at her. “They were trying to feed on me!” she protested.   
  
“Well, you didn’t expect them to restrain themselves? They’re starving. And you, I’m afraid, are too tasty a morsel to resist.”  
  
“What do you mean?”   
  
“They’re used to feeding off the hopeless. The prisoners. They’re used to gathering up scraps of remembered happiness, or corrupted happiness, such as the self-righteous exhilaration of criminals who glory in their crimes. Vindictive joy is not as powerful, not as nourishing, to the Dementors as the kind you cherish in your bosom.”   
  
Lily folded her hands over her bosom as they walked forwards, feeling violated.   
  
“No, they won’t stay here forever,” Idris Mulligan went on. “Starving creatures will feed, whatever the cost. Have you ever tried living on gruel? Have you ever tried to function, while wretched, wrenching hunger eats at you? That is how these creatures subsist from day to day. It’s an outrage that the Minister for Magic allows it.”   
  
Lily’s sympathies were directed more towards the prisoners. She remembered giving a speech in Magical Ethics about how cruel Azkaban was, how inhumane it was to inflict mandatory despair on prisoners. She had even written to the Minister for Magic about it, and had received a condescending letter back, informing her that the Ministry of Magic took her concerns very seriously.    
  
“In the muggle world,” the Minister had written (in what Lily felt to be a rather accusative tone), “the barbaric practice of capital punishment is still deemed appropriate. We in the wizarding world have progressed beyond such cruelty. We merely imprison our criminals. Yet how to ensure that they feel the proper remorse for their crimes? The Dementors enforce remorse. Wizarding criminals appreciate the full magnitude of their crimes. That is all we ask: that they are conscious of what they have done. There is no possibility of redress, therefore we demand realisation.”  
  
She looked up again at the pale faces pressed to the windows and shuddered.  
Mrs Mulligan lead them through several more Dementor-guarded doorways, always with Lily’s Patronus trotting at her side.   
  
Lily noticed that the Dementors drew back from Mrs Mulligan almost as quickly as they drew back from the silver doe. In fact, several of the creatures put up their scabbed, grey hands as though trying to ward her off.   
  
“Why don’t they attack you?” she asked.   
  
“Because they respect me,” Mrs Mulligan replied. “I have taken the trouble to learn their customs and their language. I am their Liaison Officer. They would never harm me.”   
  
Lily did not think this a very good explanation, but she didn’t say anything more, because they were coming up to the cells - grey doors almost indistinguishable from the grey walls, with little grills through which visitors could peer into the damp, rank-smelling rooms beyond. A miasma of stench and despair oozed through the windows and Lily felt her heart quickening with - what? Fear? Sympathy? She hardly knew. Perhaps it was her usual feeble mixture of the two.  
  
At the end of the corridor was a grille with fingers poking through - yellow fingers with tattered, bitten, bloodied nails - and there was a sound too: a feeble, wheezing howl, as though from an asthmatic wolf.   
  
“Tiberius Murk,” Mrs Mulligan muttered. “Thinks he’s a werewolf. Lived for a while in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts, before the Centaurs turned him in for savaging unicorns with his teeth.”  
  
Lily stopped at the grille on Tiberius’s door. The fingers had been withdrawn now, and there were wild, grey, blood-shot eyes pressed to the bars instead.   
  
“He had the cell next to Guillotine Valance’s, didn’t you, Tiberius?” Mrs Mulligan asked, with the air of a teacher addressing a particularly dense pupil.  
  
Tiberius stared wildly at the silver doe nuzzling its beautiful head against Lily’s robes. Its brightness was lacerating to the eyes in the dim corridor.    
  
“That’s right, Tiberius,” Mrs Mulligan said soothingly, “it’s a Patronus. Haven’t seen one of them in a while, have you? I suppose yours would be a wolf, wouldn’t it?”  
  
Lily thought this was a spectacularly insensitive thing to say, and, sure enough, the feeble howling from Tiberius Murk’s cell was immediately renewed.   
  
Mrs Mulligan raised her eyebrows and began to walk away. “That’s about as much sense as you’ll get from any of them, I’m afraid,” she said over her shoulder. “The Dementors are far more articulate.”  
  
Struck by an idea, Lily rummaged in the pockets of her robes until she found what she was looking for, and then poked it tentatively through the grille in Tiberius’ door, trying to keep her fingers from being exposed. Then she hurried to catch up with Idris Mulligan.         
  
“What did you give him?” the Azkaban Liaison Officer asked at once. “You poked something through the bars.”   
  
“Chocolate,” Lily said.   
  
Mrs Mulligan stared at her for some time, and then her red lips parted in a grimace of laughter. “Chocolate!” she shrieked, as though she had never heard anything so hilarious. “Chocolate! He’s been here twenty years. He begs for death every hour, on the hour. You think he can be helped with chocolate!”  
  
Lily stared back at her defiantly. “It’s all I can do, for now,” she said.  
  
Mrs Mulligan’s laughter died instantly. She put her hand on Lily’s back and nudged her onwards, murmuring: “Don’t do it again, dear. You could make my job very difficult.”   
  
“Heaven forbid,” Lily muttered, under her breath.    
  
She glanced back down the corridor once as they walked on, but couldn’t see the man who had poked his fingers so desperately between the bars of his cell.    
  
“Here we are, dear,” Mrs Mulligan said, as though the previous altercation had not taken place. “This is the corridor that leads down to the Archives. You don’t need to worry about the Archivist. He can’t feed on you; he’s too weak.” She slipped a silvery-white fur coat over Lily’s shoulders and added: “You’ll need this. Memories need to be kept in the cold or they will degrade. The Archive room is bewitched to remain frozen, whatever the temperature outside.”  
  
The coat was made of long, sleek, silvery hair, and Lily was going to ask whether it was Demiguise pelt, but Idris Mulligan was once again prodding her in the back, urging her down the stairs. Lily recognized wizard impatience and went on without further comment.   
  
  
The cold intensified as she climbed down the steps - but this time it was a wholesome, refreshing kind of cold that had the decency to remain outside her heart. The staircase wound down in tight spirals for what must have been ten or fifteen minutes, until it opened out into another painfully bright world, a world of creaking blue-white ice, dripping icicles and - at the far end, looking very out of place - row upon row of bookshelves. There was no discernable source of light; the place simply glowed with its own dazzling luminescence, and the whole cave echoed with that dry, rustling, clean sound of ice, like the ringing of wind-chimes.   
  
There was a sort of path where the ice was whitest, so Lily followed that. It led over a kind of bridge that crossed a frozen pool; the surface gleamed with loops of rainbow-colours, like a puddle of petrol, and seemed to draw the eyes magnetically. She found that she could walk on the path easily; it must, she thought, have been bewitched with a Gripping Charm, like the Quaffle in a game of Quidditch.   
If even the toe of her shoe strayed off the path, however, she found that she slipped (not only slipped, but was pulled towards the frozen pool twenty feet below, as though her foot was being yanked out from under her by invisible hands).   
  
It must have been to discourage prisoners from hiding in this wilderness, she thought, though they would probably freeze to death if they tried. A voice in her head suggested that most of the prisoners would find this preferable. She remembered how wonderful the physical cold had felt after the intrusive, hopeless cold induced by the Dementors (the kind of cold that made warmth unimaginable), and shuddered again.   
  
On increasingly weak knees, she edged her way over the bridge of ice to the endless stands of bookshelves. They were stacked with glass bottles that glittered with frost. Beside the shelves was a ghostly Dementor. He (at least, she assumed it was a ‘he’) was floating above the floor, rather than gliding over it, as the other Dementors would - he couldn’t seem to anchor himself - and he looked oddly blurred; Lily felt as though she was looking at him through dirty glass. In front of him was a stumpy column of stone, like a sundial, or a bird-feeder, and on top of this was a Pensieve: a rudely carved stone basin, empty and etched with runes around the rim.   
  
The Archivist’s whole being seemed to shudder as she came closer. The rattling breath she had expected came out as a wheezing hiss; he reminded her of Tiberius Murk - something broken and weak doing its best to be savage.   
  
The Archivist backed away, almost melting into the shelves behind him, and Lily said, in a voice stronger than she felt: “Guillotine Valance, please.”   
  
One of those scabbed grey hands reached for a bottle on the shelf behind - faltering a little, because on the first attempt, the hand slipped through the glass - and passed it to her. It was filled with the swirling, silvery substance that Lily had often seen in Dumbledore’s Pensieve: half-smoke and half-liquid, like a dense, dripping, clinging mist.  
  
Lily uncorked the bottle and emptied its contents into the Pensieve; then she bent down and let her nose touch the restless surface of the substance.  
  
At once, she was pitched forwards into the basin, and found herself straightening up in a room she recognised, though it had been very different when she had last been there. It was the Valance library: the same vaulted cellar, lined with bookshelves, dusty wine-racks, and candles burning in elegant brackets on the walls, but with no chalked symbols on the floor, no cob-webs, no open books and torn-out pages littering the flagstones, no open windows hanging off their splintered frames.   
  
And Guillotine Valance was standing beside her: the same tight, baby-blonde curls and sardonic brown eyes, but she was not bearing her teeth, a detail which made her almost unrecognizable.   
  
She was dusting one of the many goblin weapons mounted on the walls - a particularly vicious-looking scimitar - and calling a selection of names while she worked. Her voice echoed shrilly in the vaulted cellar.   
  
“Elsa! Jonah! Nearly time for school! You’d better be ready when I find you, or no chocolate frog when you come home! I mean it!”  
  
It was at this moment that the room shook; dust fell from the vaulted ceiling into Guillotine Valance’s baby-blonde curls. A portion of the wall was sliding inwards, and somebody was standing there, somebody short but oddly glittering.    
  
A goblin had appeared at the newly-emerged entranceway. He looked like a clerk from Gringotts - wearing a pair of pince-nez and a dusty white legal wig. He had a wide, sparkling grimace that he evidently thought was a smile, and several of his teeth were jewel-encrusted.   
  
“I regret to announce that your children have strayed onto goblin territory, Mrs Valance,” he said in a smooth but croaking voice. “They will remain there until we are satisfied.”  
  
Guillotine Valance seemed to reel slightly. She gripped the nearest book-case for support, but she must have swallowed her fear, because her mouth was twisted with fury when she looked up at the goblin again. “They haven’t even left the house!” she shouted.   
  
The goblin’s leer widened. “No, indeed. You see, Septimus Valance built his manor house on top of a goblin mine. Didn’t you know that? He killed all the inhabitants within - including our young and our females - and then built his ugly wizard dwelling over the entrance, as a mark of his conquest. I believe he is quoted in your history books as saying that conquest is not about breaking heads but about breaking spirits. Unfortunately for you, Margaret Valance, my people believe the same thing.”  
  
“Give me my children,” Guillotine Valance growled. “I won’t ask you again.”   
  
The goblin’s leer widened. “Let me make this simple for you, Mrs Valance.” He hesitated slightly. “It’s _Miss_ Valance, actually, isn’t it?”   
  
There was no response from the stony-faced, fiery-eyed woman, so the goblin went on:  
  
“You’ve stolen our treasures, so we have taken yours. And I’m afraid we cannot negotiate an exchange. The matter is not so simple. You must pay for the indignity of displaying our stolen treasures. You have brought visitors to see them, told and re-told the stories of their capture. The accumulated interest of the centuries of ignominious fame you visited upon our goblin treasures will cost you dearly. Yet pay for it you will - if not in silver and sweat, then in blood - the only thing you Valances seem to care for. If you want to see your children again, you will become a treasure-seeker for us. You will travel underground, through the vast networks of dragon-caves beneath the Atlantic Ocean, or to the frozen wastes of the Arctic - places too dangerous for goblins to visit, and that we couldn’t pay wizards to brave for us. For every year of toil, we will release one of your children. If you do not return, they will all die. We have no interest in their father. He is a muggle, and therefore has nothing we want. He may go free, back to his own people. He has not oppressed us, though I daresay that was merely for lack of opportunity.”   
  
“I want to see them,” Guillotine Valance said immediately.  
  
“The longer you take to recover treasure for us, the more of them you are likely to see. Goblins specialize in immortalizing beautiful things, you see. We have a smith who makes jewellery from wizard bodies - teeth, bones, hair, eyes. He can set youth and bloom in stone. He can make the sentimentally precious into the truly priceless. If you delay, we will unleash his skills on your children.”  
  
A stony silence greeted this announcement - Guillotine Valance was holding her head up high, but she was white and trembling, and looked as though she was fighting the urge to be sick.   
  
After a few minutes, the goblin shook his head. “Disappointing,“ he murmured. “But, do not worry, Mrs Valance. We’ll see to it that your children accumulate in value.”   
  
“Please!” she cried. The word seemed to burst from her lips without her volition. “Please. I’ll do anything...”  
  
The goblin’s leer was now so wide it almost reached his ears. “That must have been very difficult for you to admit,” he said “You’ve taken your first step into a wider world, you know.”    
  
Guillotine Valance bit back whatever retorts might have occurred to her. The goblin seemed pleased at her restraint, and her sagging shoulders. She wasn’t fighting him any more.    
  
“You will follow me,” he said. “The dragon tunnels can be reached from our mines. See that we are not followed. If the Ministry of Magical Law Enforcement sets foot in here, we will know that you have betrayed us, and your little treasures will become our little treasures.”  
  
Guillotine walked to the library door and locked it. There were footsteps on the other side, and a tentative knock. Lily heard a man’s voice say: “Maggie?”    
  
Guillotine Valance ignored it. She followed the goblin into the dark.


	20. Spilt Milk, Part Seven

Lily rocked back on her heels but didn’t fall. Something was propping her up. It was the Archivist, still drawing his ragged breaths, still dissolving slowly around the edges. His scabbed grey hand was holding her beneath the elbow, and it felt like she was leaning on a sack of cold water.   
  
It was this unpleasant sensation that brought her back to her senses. She found her balance, grabbing the edge of the Pensieve for support, and backed away from him. The ice-cave was darker without her Patronus, and the unwholesome cold that resonated from the Dementor was getting to her, in her exhaustion and dismay.   
  
To try and calm herself, and partly to check that it had been real, she let her eyes linger for a moment on the Pensieve. Its contents had become turbulent again; the surface rippled and jumped. Gradually, as she watched, it began to assume a shape. The memories themselves were holding a form. The smoky liquid gathered and spread and curled, until it shimmered into a large, recognizable shape.   
  
It climbed out of the Pensieve and trotted to Lily’s side, gazing up at her with large, bright eyes.   
  
It was a silver doe, a smoky impersonation of Lily’s Patronus. At first, it appeared fuzzy around the edges, like the Archivist but, as she watched, it grew more concentrated, pulled itself together somehow. Its brightness increased until it dazzled, even amongst the glowing ice.    
  
Guillotine Valance’s memories wanted to escape.   
  
Well, Lily thought, with the cold logic that often settled upon her when she was distraught, it was the least she could do, really...   
  
The Archivist was the only witness, and he was in no position to protest. The silver doe looked more solid than he did.  
  
If she had not seen the horrific conditions of the prison, Lily might have hesitated, or at least confided in Idris Mulligan, but she was feeling sickened and shaky. And surely an innocent woman’s memories couldn’t do any harm. A criminal’s perhaps, but not Guillotine Valance’s, not the memories of a dead, wronged mother.     
  
The glittering doe nuzzled its head against her robes, and pushed her in the direction of the ice bridge. With one last furtive glance at the Archivist, Lily crossed the bridge and climbed the stairs, into the rank-smelling warmth of the prison.       
Idris Mulligan was at the top of the stairs, fumbling in her handbag.   
  
“Ready, girl? We’d better be off. The Dementors are getting restless; their hospitality has limits, you know. And I’ve got a sick rug at home.”   
  
  
When she got back to the fireplace in the cavernous Hogwarts Entrance Hall, Lily stepped into the shadows, conjured a glass bottle from mid-air, and held it out to the almost-invisible doe. The creature sniffed it tentatively, and then drifted into it, nose first.   
  
Lily stuffed the bottle inside her robes, looking over her shoulder to check that the room was deserted. It wasn’t for long. Professor McGonagall was walking towards her with purposeful strides; her face was anxious, and her lips pressed so tightly together that they had almost disappeared.   
  
“Chocolate, Evans!” she barked. “This instant!”   
  
Lily was understandably confused by this statement, until she saw that Professor McGonagall was waving a bar of Honeydukes’ Finest chocolate under her nose.   
  
“Oh,” she said, the mists clearing, “because of the Dementors.”   
  
“I’m surprised that Madam Pomfrey didn’t mention to you the necessity of taking some.”   
  
“She did. I did bring some with me, I just… lost it.”  
  
Professor McGonagall seemed to attribute her confusion to the after-effects of Dementors, because she didn’t ask any more questions. She waited for Lily to swallow a few squares of chocolate, and her voice was softer when she spoke again. “The Headmaster wants to see you,” she said.   
  
Lily’s stomach tightened guiltily. “Why?”   
  
“Presumably to ascertain that you have recovered.”   
  
“I’m fine.”   
  
“Then you may tell him so yourself. Off you go.”   
  
Dragging her heels slightly, Lily climbed the marble staircase to the second floor, stopping sullenly at the gargoyle-guarded entranceway to Dumbledore’s office.   
  
“Fizzing Whizzbees,” she muttered.  
  
The gargoyle sprang aside, and Lily stepped onto the moving spiral staircase that lead up to Dumbledore’s office. The door was standing open, and Dumbledore was seated behind his desk, humming cheerfully. Lily knocked anyway.   
  
“Professor McGonagall said you wanted to see me, sir.”   
  
Dumbledore blinked at her benevolently. “Ah, yes. Sit down, Lily. Madam Pomfrey informs me that you have been viewing memories in the Archives of Azkaban.”   
  
“Yes, sir.” Lily paused uneasily. She didn’t want to get Madam Pomfrey into trouble, but she didn’t want Dumbledore to think she had left the castle without permission either. “I was just going instead of Meg, I didn’t think there’d be a problem…”   
  
“There would not have been a problem if Meg had gone,” Dumbledore replied.   
  
Lily wondered whether she had broken Ministry Regulations by viewing Guillotine Valance’s memories when she wasn’t even her relative. Now she thought about it, it did seem a bit intrusive.   
  
“I don’t understand, sir.”             
  
“It is by no means clear to me, either, Lily,” Dumbledore remarked cheerfully, “but I will endeavour to explain. You see, magic is very… personal. Especially healing magic. Just look at Poppy; she has to walk a very fine line between professional compassion and healthy detachment. She needs to care that her patients recover, in order for her Charms to be effective, but she needs to maintain a certain detachment to keep from… shall we say… disapproving?… of her patients, on account of the rather stupid and unkind things they do to one another. That is why she is such a valuable woman. She can close her mind at will. You won’t find another Healer like her, Lily, not even at St Mungo’s.”  
  
Lily was about to open her mouth to say something, but Dumbledore held up a hand amicably. “There is a lot to get through, Lily; I must beg your indulgence. Like all teachers, I am a story-teller; it is imperative that I create the right conditions for understanding to thrive.”   
  
Lily settled back into silence. She preferred this, at any rate, because it gave her an opportunity to frame her defence. She didn’t understand how he knew about the escape of Guillotine Valance’s memories, but it appeared that he did, and she was preparing to explain. Dumbledore would understand; perhaps he would even be able to publicly clear Guillotine Valance’s name. She didn’t know why but, for the first time since she’d known him, she felt slightly uneasy about confiding in him.   
  
“Have you heard the story of Alaric the Unwieldy?” Dumbledore asked.    
  
Lily shook her head.   
  
“A Dark Wizard of the middle ages - a tyrant, in point of fact. He was fatally wounded in a battle against the muggles of Romania. You see, his aim was the subjection of all muggles - a rather unoriginal one, Lily, even then. He was shot through the chest with an arrow but, being a fierce warlord, convinced of his own invulnerability, he ignored it, until he was on the point of death. The Healer sent for to attend him knew that there was not much hope for his life, but she administered an Anaesthesia Charm, to try and ease his suffering. You know that, in order for an Anaesthesia Charm to be effective, you have to care about the patient; you have to establish a certain empathy with him?”   
  
Again, Lily nodded.   
  
“Well, this empathy created a magical bridge between Healer and tyrant. Alaric, even in his dying state, was able to exploit it. He used her empathy to possess her. He abandoned his own body, which was weak and dying, and crossed the bridge of magical understanding between them, in order to inhabit hers.”   
  
Lily couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Forgetting Dumbledore’s request for silence, she said: “I didn’t know that could happen.”  
  
“It is dark magic, Lily; dark and dangerous magic, but a truly desperate being will attempt it.”           
  
“What happened to the Healer?” Lily asked.   
  
“The Healer - or rather, Alaric, in the Healer’s form - continued her bloody campaign against the muggles of Eastern Europe, until she was killed by a young traveller named Godric Gryffindor.”  
  
Lily gasped. “Gryffindor?”   
  
“Yes. It was a considerable trial for him. He knew that he had to kill the innocent Healer in order to slay Alaric - possessor and possessed were too deeply intertwined by this point; they could not be separated. When they were at his mercy, Alaric allowed the Healer to speak to Gryffindor, to beg for her life. It is said that Gryffindor never forgave himself.”   
  
“So he killed them?”   
  
“Yes, he killed them; there was nothing else to be done. Cases of possession must be caught early, Lily, if there is to be any hope for the victim.”  
  
“Yes, Sir,” said Lily miserably.   
  
Dumbledore allowed silence to descend, seemingly distracted by a bird that had appeared on the windowsill. She knew he was giving her a chance to volunteer the information he wanted, before he began to interrogate her. She sighed.   
  
“The memories took the form of my Patronus,” she murmured, staring at the blue carpet, which was embroidered with stars. “That’s how I got them out."   
  
“Extraordinary,” Dumbledore muttered, still staring out of the window. He seemed to be still waiting.    
  
Lily took the bottle containing Guillotine Valance’s memories out of her pocket and offered it up to him.   
  
“But Guillotine Valance isn’t a Dark Witch, sir,” she said, almost peevishly. “She was innocent; she never killed her children. And she is dead, after all. I didn’t think you could be possessed by a memory.”   
  
“It depends how strong the memory is,” Dumbledore told her, “and how sympathetic the person who sees it.”  
  
Lily said nothing. She didn’t understand how anybody could _not_ be sympathetic to Guillotine Valance.      
  
“Memories can be evil, Lily,” Dumbledore went on. “They can stop one from living ones life. They are like Kelpies, lurking beneath the surface of the water, waiting to drag their victims down into the depths with them. Because misery loves company.”   
  
Lily kept silent, watching the pearl-coloured memories slosh gently against the sides of the bottle. She wondered if they realised what was going on. The idea made her shiver slightly.     
  
“Please don’t take them back to Azkaban, sir,” she murmured. “She never deserved to be there.”   
  
Dumbledore seemed delighted by this stipulation. “I believe you are right, Lily. Margaret Valance enjoyed her time at Hogwarts - I know, because I was her Transfiguration teacher at the time. Let’s allow her unhappy memories to reside in the same place as her happy ones.”  
  
“Thank you, sir.”   
  
“On a related topic, Lily, I see that you have been reading _Sympathetic Magic_.” He nodded towards the cut on Lily’s arm, which had faded to a swirling white scar, still taped-over with Spellotape.   
  
Dumbledore showed her the back of his left hand, where the same swirling, silver-white design could be seen.   
  
“It may interest you to hear that Voldemort, though he never discovered the secret Chapter in Sympathetic Magic himself, and so never sustained a mark like this, had heard of this curious magical phenomenon. It was a dark parody of this magic that he used when marking his followers with the Dark Mark. Though a significant difference, and one that may function to our advantage someday, is that, while the Light Mark, as it has become known, exclusively chooses people that have no trace of malice in them, the Dark Mark does not only choose people that have no trace of goodness in them. The Dark Mark can be fooled; the Light Mark cannot.”  
  
“You mean a Death Eater might have a change of heart?”  
  
“Stranger things have happened.”   
  
“I can’t think of any,” Lily replied.   
  
Dumbledore smiled. “Well, you’re young. When you have seen as much of the world as I have, Lily, you will learn that nothing is so endlessly fresh and puzzling as the human heart.”  
  
Lily didn’t argue with him. She wanted to believe it - she just didn’t want to be fooled again.   
  
Dumbledore seemed to understand, because he didn’t press the matter.   
  
“Very well, Lily, you had better get back to your classes - although, given that they will be finishing in about ten minutes, perhaps it would be best if you went straight down to the Great Hall for dinner. You have, after all, had a trying day, and mysteries and morals always seem to make _me_ hungry.”


	21. A Single Candle

Lily was in the library, leaning over a book. Madam Pince was watching every page-turn with jealous resentment. Lily had a carnal affection for books: she was always absent-mindedly stroking the covers and running her hands over the text; it made Madam Pince deeply uneasy. Also watching her jealously from the upper gallery was Severus Snape. He was half-heartedly reading a book on Defensive Magical Theory, but he didn’t seem able to concentrate and, after a while, he abandoned the book completely and gave himself up to the contemplation of the studious girl below him. He leaned his elbows on the balustrade overlooking the first floor of the library and cupped his chin in his hands, his expression one of miserable fascination, like a man who’s been searching all his life for the yeti, and has finally found it in bed with his wife.   
  
When you are in love, you become highly skilled in the art of surveillance. Snape knew Lily’s time-table off by heart, knew which nights she had Charms Club and Magical Ethics; he knew when she ate breakfast in the Great Hall: usually early, so that she could get some reading done before classes; she would sit in a patch of sunlight that poured in through the high windows and shut her eyes from time to time, as though she wanted to devote all her attention to the blissful warmth. He had seen her doing this whenever she ate chocolate cake, and it had never failed to make him smile. It was failing to make him smile these days, of course, because it only twisted the knife of longing that was permanently sticking into his heart.    
  
Suddenly, James Potter swaggered into the library, hair ruffled and robes hanging artfully off his shoulders. Snape clenched his fists. Hatred and jealousy squirmed inside his stomach, as he saw Potter take a seat next opposite the red-haired girl.   
  
“Alright, Evans?” he said.   
  
Lily made a noise that could have been either a polite acknowledgement or a moan of despair. Potter, being an optimistic boy, chose to interpret it as the former.    
  
“I was just wondering,” he went on breezily, “whether you wanted to come into Hogsmeade with me this weekend? I mean, Arabella Figg and Saskia Williams both wanted to go with me, but I thought I’d give you a chance first.”   
  
“What did I say last time?” Lily asked patiently, without looking up from her book.  
  
Potter smiled disarmingly. “Well, I wasn’t one hundred per cent clear on that,” he said.   
  
“Wasn’t there something about how I’d rather go out with the Giant Squid?”  
  
Potter shrugged. “You were under a lot of stress at the time. I’ll give you a second chance.”    
  
Lily finally looked up, and was surprised to find that she was amused rather than incensed at the confident grin on his face. Suppressing a smile, she said: “you’re kind of a masochist, aren’t you?”   
  
“I can be, if that’s what you’re in to,” Potter replied.   
  
Lily had to work hard to suppress her laughter this time. “You know what?” she said, as soon as she trusted herself to speak. “It is. Why don’t you take this book and hit yourself over the head with it a couple of times? Then I’ll think about going out with you.”  
  
Potter sighed. “Ah, Evans, why does it have to be like this?”   
  
“I guess I’m just crazy,” Lily said indulgently. “Why don’t you go and find Arabella Figg or Saskia Williams?”   
  
She went back to her book. Potter gazed at her dreamily for a while; her rudeness had done nothing to dent his good mood; in fact, it seemed to increase it. He was liking her more and more all the time.   
  
“Well, maybe I’ll see you there,” he said, with reckless optimism.   
  
“I expect you will if I’m not quick enough to hide from you,” she replied.   
  
All this time, Snape had been watching them, alternately seething with hatred and grinning with pride. At these words, pride won out, and he watched Potter leave the library with an expression of gloating satisfaction. The famous Quidditch hero had a little less swagger on his way out.    
  
Snape watched Lily with fierce tenderness for a few more minutes, then picked up his bag and made his way back to the Slytherin common room. Things were looking up. He couldn’t have her, but at least Potter wasn’t going to.   
  
Once there, he found Bellatrix Black sitting in an armchair by the fire, looking pale and piteous, all trace of her usual manic energy gone. There were black smudges of ash on her face, as though she had escaped a burning building, and her eyes had dark circles underneath them.   
  
Snape walked over to her. “All done, Bella?” he asked happily.  
  
Bellatrix pressed her lips together, as though fighting the urge to be sick. “I’ve done what you asked,” she said eventually. “I stole the ingredients from Slughorn’s store-cupboard and made the potion in the Black Family Dungeon. I wonder,” she added, with contempt in her voice, “why you didn’t do it yourself, since you’re supposed to be so good at this drudgery.”  
  
“Now, how could a half-blood like me match the technical expertise of a daughter of the House of Black?” Snape asked sarcastically.  
  
Bellatrix raised her hand to punch him on the arm in her usual way, but her heart wasn’t in it, and it ended up being more of a tap. “What do you want me to do now?” she asked wretchedly.  
  
“I want you to give it to your cousin,” he said. “Put it into a bottle of Firewhisky and start talking somewhere near him about how it was sent to you by your father. Gloat about it, then leave it somewhere in plain sight for him to steal. He’s a contemptible little thief, he’ll take the bait.”  
  
“What makes you think I’ve got Firewhisky?” asked Bella, pressing her lips together again. Her eyes were glinting dangerously, but she didn’t dare give vent to her feelings. She would take them out on somebody smaller than her - possibly that cat of Pettigrew’s. Snape hoped she remembered his advice about torturing it in front of Pettigrew - it was such a waste of effort if he didn’t watch.    
  
“Do you really want me to answer that?” Snape asked.   
  
“I have nothing to hide,” Bella said, with a trace of her usual ferocity.   
  
“If you didn’t have anything to hide, Bella, you wouldn’t be brewing potions for me,” Snape pointed out. Since she was still glaring at him, he sighed like a long-suffering martyr and added: “Lucius Malfoy gave you a bottle of Firewhisky the night the two of you - ,”   
  
“Alright,” Bella interrupted, glancing about nervously. It wasn’t like her to do anything nervously, so this motion made her look slightly deranged. “Where do you want me to leave it for him to steal?”   
  
“I’ll leave it to that warped imagination of yours,” Snape replied, smiling unpleasantly. “I know you won’t let me down. I trust I don’t need to remind you that, if you do, you’ll be the first member of that impressive dynasty of yours to be expelled from Hogwarts. ”    
  
Bella looked at him with surly admiration. “I’ll make you suffer for the way you’ve treated me,” she growled.   
  
“You like to be treated badly,” Snape replied coolly. “Lucius Malfoy told me.”  
  
Bella pursed her lips again, but when Snape turned away, her eyes followed him, and they had a sharp, hungry look.    
  
Snape went to sit in the arm-chair she had just vacated, glaring at a few younger students who had been edging towards the seat. Regulus was sitting on the hearthrug by the fire, cutting something out of the Daily Prophet.   
  
“What’s got you into such a good mood?” Regulus asked, without looking up. “Has someone died?”  
  
“Not yet,” Snape said, with a smile that, in a different person, might have been called light-hearted.   
  
Regulus was looking at the front cover of the Daily Prophet with wide, excited green eyes. He seemed to be cutting out a picture of the Dark Mark (it was always on the front of the Daily Prophet these days - everybody had learned to recognise that starry skull, with the snake protruding from its mouth like a coiled tongue - it was starting to seem like the newspaper’s logo).  
  
“Who’s dead this time?” Snape asked, distracted from his vindictive happiness by the thought that it could be Lily’s family. His mind always leapt to this ridiculous conclusion. He tried to tell himself that there were millions of muggles out there, and that the Dark Lord was probably working his way through them indiscriminately. Why would he happen upon Lily’s parents?  
  
Another reason why Snape wanted to become a Death Eater was to protect Lily and her family from the Dark Lord’s onslaught. He fantasized about telling her that her loved ones were safe, that everything was taken care of, that she could rely on him. In the grip of these magnanimous fantasies, Snape had decided he would even spare Lily’s sister, Petunia.   
  
“You’ll never guess who it is this time,” Regulus said, his eyes shining.   
  
Snape treated Regulus to another of his withering looks, so Regulus decided to elaborate: “It’s the father of that Divination teacher, Caladrius. Looks like the Dark Lord is trying to get at him by holding family members hostage.”   
  
Regulus got up from the rug and sat on the arm of Snape’s chair. Severus remembered Narcissa Black doing the same thing a few weeks ago, but her cousin’s odour was far less pleasant. He wondered if it was a Black family trait to get much too close to people. Perhaps they were genetically incapable of estimating a courteous distance from which to talk, or perhaps (and this would accord much better with Snape’s experience of the family) they just didn’t care that they made people uncomfortable.   
  
“I reckon you were right about leaving it for a bit before we take Caladrius to the Dark Lord,” Regulus muttered.   
  
Snape sighed with exasperation and looked over his shoulder to check that they were alone. “Are you still going on about that?”  
  
“We know the Dark Lord wants him now; we’d be fools not to try and kidnap him. Fortune favours the brave.”   
  
“No, it doesn’t,” Snape said wearily.  
  
“Anyway, we’ll leave it for a bit. Wait until Dumbledore lets his guard down. Don’t say anything. Discretion is the better part of valour.”   
  
“Try telling that to Potter,” Snape murmured resentfully.  
  
Regulus didn’t seem to have heard him. A glazed look appeared in his eyes whenever he was reciting proverbs; it looked as though he was possessed. “I’ll find some way of getting him, though,” he said at last. “Slow and steady wins the race.”     
  
“Tell me, Regulus, were you hit on the head by the Random Stupidity Generator?” Snape asked.  
  
Regulus didn’t respond. He was still looking at The Dark Mark on the front page. It suddenly dawned on Snape what an enormous task it would be to save Lily from the Dark Lord. He had the sneaking suspicion - though he tried not to think about it, because the very idea made him feel nauseous and out of breath - that she was planning on fighting him. He felt tired to his very bones whenever he thought about her. But he was going to save her. She had saved him, that afternoon by the lake.   
  
Nobody had ever stood up for him like that before. It cannot be overstated what an effect this had on Snape. It had been an effect that post-dated the event; one of those subtle, insidious effects that come with enforced solitude and bitter reflection. At the time, he’d been too humiliated and angry to see it, but afterwards he’d realized what a brave, selfless thing she’d done - defending him from the taunts of the most popular boy in school, who could easily have hexed her and exposed her to equal ridicule.   
  
Her actions had clarified everything for Severus; he knew who his friends were the instant he lost them. Bella, Avery, Lestrange and Lucius Malfoy had all been in that crowd by the lake, but none of them had seen fit to intervene. He knew now that Lily was the only one to whom he owed any loyalty. He squirmed with gratitude every time he saw her.   
  
But this was hell for Severus; he hated being in her debt, hated owing her anything. He wanted to be useful to her; he wanted her to need him, and the only way he could think of to ensure that was by becoming a Death Eater. So, in the effort to earn what he already had, he lost everything.    
  
He started to feel fierce, fanatical about her. His tenderness had hardened into a kind of steely devotion. As the world became darker for Snape, she seemed to grow brighter by contrast; as hatred began to consume him, as he withdrew into solitude and scheming, as he became obliged to repress his feelings, his love for Lily burned like a single candle in the darkness, that blazed all the brighter for its isolation. It became fierce through containment, like a wild animal kept in a cage. Squashed down in the darkness, it raged and charred. And his hatred couldn’t extinguish it. He wasn’t sure if even hatred of her could extinguish it. Hatred would just sit uncomfortably on top of his love, like a fakir on a bed of needles.


	22. Rosura, Part One

Lucius Malfoy had been sending Narcissa Black a letter every day for the past two weeks. She hadn’t replied. He had sent flowers and chocolates - she sniffed them, she ate them - but she still hadn’t acknowledged him.    
  
Even Snape, who never had any trouble believing the worst of people, had been unprepared for how cruel she could be. She read Malfoy’s letters out to her friends at the Slytherin table over breakfast, giggling scornfully. And it got worse. Desperate to hear some kind of response, Malfoy talked openly about the Dark Lord in these letters, telling her that he had powerful allies, warning her that the revolution was coming, promising her that he could ensure she was Queen over the entire wizarding world someday, with hordes of muggles and wizards alike paying tribute to her.    
  
Bad enough if the Ministry heard about these letters - Malfoy would be sent to Azkaban without trial - after all, what need for a trial if you had written confessions? But if the Dark Lord heard about them, Malfoy’s fate would be far worse. Snape, busy as he was, planning his revenge on Potter and sullenly watching Lily from behind a book everywhere she went - this latter was a painful but compulsive pastime - couldn’t help feeling that this was partly his fault. He decided to try reasoning with Narcissa.    
  
He found her in the girls’ dormitories - boys were allowed up there in the Slytherin common room, though they had to pass through a magical force-field that scanned their intentions - a kind of fixed Legilimency Charm that could detect hostile or amorous intent. Snape had always been able to fool it - since his feelings toward Narcissa were a mixture of both.   
  
She was standing over a small cauldron on her dressing table, adding ingredients from her vast collection of glass bottles and phials almost indiscriminately. Her grey eyes - normally so dead-looking - were shining with the thrill of discovery.    
  
“Do you remember me saying that I couldn’t be responsible for what he’d do once he’d taken the potion?” Snape said, without preamble.   
  
Narcissa did not appear surprised to see him. “Certainly,” she murmured. “As far as I’m concerned, Severus, your part in the whole affair is finished.”   
  
Snape decided to ignore this clumsy hint. “Well, I meant it. You can’t just keep refusing to talk to him, or he’s going to do something stupid.”   
  
Narcissa raised her eyebrows. “He slept with my sister,” she said lightly. “He can wait a few more weeks.”   
  
“No, he can’t.” Snape came closer to her, and swept the potion she was brewing with a contemptuous eye. “By the way, that’s going to explode if you don’t add some Armadillo bile to it.”   
  
For the first time, Narcissa’s confidence seemed to falter. “How long do I have?” she asked.   
  
Snape shrugged. “About two minutes.”  
  
Narcissa let her hand hover over the glass bottles and phials, silver flasks and hollow jewels arrayed on her dressing table. “Armadillo bile…” she murmured.     
  
“Anyway,“ said Snape, “about Malfoy. This isn’t one of those love potions that you get in wizard crackers, or that they give out as free samples in Witch Weekly. This is Amortentia. Be nice to him or he’ll kill himself.”  
  
“Armadillo bile…”   
  
“Or you.”   
  
“I don’t have any Armadillo bile, Severus,” she murmured, with a little squeak in her voice.     
  
Snape sighed deeply. He was finding everybody so exhausting these days. “Maybe we should talk about this later,” he said.   
  
“Wait!” Narcissa squealed, all pretence of dignity thrown aside. “You’ve got to help me, Severus. I can’t blow up the Slytherin common room, I’ll be expelled!”   
  
“That will be the least of your problems if you’re anywhere near that explosion.”   
  
Narcissa took a deep, steadying breath, and her voice was soft, almost pleading, when she continued. “Alright, alright, I’ll write to him. How’s that? I’ll send him a letter tonight - I’ll sign it with kisses - just help me.”  
  
Snape delved in the pocket of his robes and produced a small glass phial. He held it over the potion with a steady, spindly white hand and allowed a drop of the thick, petrol-like substance in the phial to trickle into the cauldron. The potion hissed pacifically, and then there was silence.   
  
Narcissa, now that the danger had passed, resumed her composure. She was looking at him with resentful admiration. “You’re always prepared for everything, aren’t you, Severus?”  
  
Snape smiled unpleasantly. “I have to be. I’m surrounded by idiots.”  
  
Narcissa glared at him; her icy politeness had turned to icy disdain. “I could ask Malfoy to have you killed for that remark, you repugnant little half-blood.”   
  
“Oh, so you’ve finally got it into your head that a person who’s taken Amortentia can get violent?” he asked coldly. “Well, you’ll find out - because you’d rather blunder into mistakes than listen to advice, wouldn’t you? - that his violence isn’t so easy to control.”   
  
“He’d never hurt me.”   
  
“Not even if he found out you’d asked me to poison him?”   
  
Narcissa faltered slightly, but the sneer was still in her voice when she replied. “You wouldn’t…”    
  
“Just remember that he’s dangerous,” Snape growled. “Amortentia victims who get rejected sometimes take what they want by force. Your precious pure blood isn’t going to help you. That’s why I told you I couldn’t take responsibility - .”  
  
“Oh, since when have you ever taken responsibility for anything?” she snapped. “Everything’s James Potter’s fault, isn’t it? You go sneaking around the castle at night, but that’s alright, because Potter and his gang do it. You jinx first-year Gryffindors, but it’s only because Potter jinxes first-year Slytherins; you called that mudblood a mudblood, but it was only because Potter made you mad. Well, at least I _know_ what I am, Severus. I don’t go around all doe-eyed, whining about my mistreatment, pretending to be a victim. You’re pathetic!”    
  
Snape had taken out his wand. He was breathing fast, and his mouth was twisted, as though he’d just swallowed something extremely bitter. “You watch your mouth,” he growled.   
  
“Or what?” she sneered. “My father is Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. You so much as _think_ about hexing me and I’ll have your wand snapped faster than you can blink. You’ll have to go back to the muggle world, or live like Hagrid, carrying things around for Dumbledore, or cleaning wizard dwellings like a common house elf. Maybe Potter and Sirius will take you on as a kind of butler.”   
  
Snape teetered on the edge of blind fury, but that icy core of rationality at the centre of his brain saved him. She was right. He couldn’t do anything to Narcissa Black - at any rate, not yet. He didn’t have anybody in the wizarding world who could help him - no family, no friends, and the Death Eaters didn’t trust him. With that talent for self-control that had helped him survive his childhood, he pushed his anger down, feeling it writhe and chafe against his insides as he did so. He lowered his wand, hands shaking, and glared at her.   
  
“I’ll get you for this,” he growled, knowing how stupid this threat sounded, and chafing all the more.   
  
Narcissa, though pale, was smiling triumphantly. “That’s right, Severus,” she said sarcastically. “Why, I expect one day you’ll _be_ somebody in the wizarding world. Under-secretary to some pure-blood Minister, perhaps. Just remember that, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, you can’t empty your veins of that muggle blood. There’s only one way to do that. And, if you bother me again, I’ll have Malfoy do it for you.”   
  
She took a deep, contented breath, and went on, “you know, pure blood wizards might condescend to talk to you, Severus, but you’re not their equal. Even with all the cleverness in the world, you can’t hide what you are.”  
  
Snape clenched his fists as she left, seething with hatred and humiliation. He wouldn’t have detested her half so much if he hadn’t been afraid that she was right. Oh, not that he was inferior - he knew he was smarter than all those sneering, in-bred morons - but that it would never matter, because he’d been tainted from the very beginning. Nobody would ever care what he could do, because he was half-muggle. He could get out of that claustrophobic muggle dunghill in Spinner’s End, but he could never leave it, because it circumscribed him here, as surely as if he’d been branded on the forehead with the word ‘half-blood’.        
  
He had thought he’d seen evil - his wife-beating father, the Muggle-baiting Death Eaters, and the despicably arrogant show-off James Potter. With the exception of the last one, he had cohabited with these evils amicably enough. They hadn’t got to him.  But Narcissa was going to pay for her insolence. Well, he should have expected it, he realised. How could Bellatrix Black’s sister be normal?  
  
Not for the first time, his thoughts wandered back to Lily. He wanted to show her that he could command people in this place, that he belonged here, that he was just as good as any of them.   
  
She was muggle-born but he had never associated _her_ with the muggle world. She was so strongly, so obviously, magical that he was surprised anyone could see the muggle in her - nobody with those electric green eyes and ruby-red hair could belong to that dreary world of cars and concrete. In his childhood, she had represented the magical world that he’d been denied access to. He had dreamed about escaping with her to Hogwarts, getting away from the bulky, block-headed children that infested their muggle neighbourhood, the ones who would have crushed her spirit if she’d had the kind of spirit that could be crushed.   
  
But it hadn’t turned out like that. Cruelty, he had discovered, was not an exclusively muggle trait. And this world didn’t want either of them - or, at any rate, it didn’t want them to be themselves. You had to fit in with the magical world - keep your head down, study hard, befriend the powerful people - no matter how stupid, arrogant or down-right sadistic they were. Cleverness and talent could only get you so far in this world - the rest was down to cunning and diplomacy.   
  
This couldn’t be explained to Lily, and he wouldn’t have wanted her to change even if she did see the necessity for it, so Severus had decided, sometime in his first year, after the first shock of disillusionment was over, that he was going to get to a position of power for the both of them; he would become somebody important, and then he would _make_ people accept her, just as she was - muggle-born, outspoken and impulsive. He had realized that life was unfair, but there was no reason why she had to realize it.          
  
It was partly that, anyway, and partly that he wanted to impress her. Severus was a pragmatic man; he knew - he’d known since he was ten - that he was not in her league in terms of looks. Nobody was going to confuse him for a Gilderoy Lockhart, or even - he clenched his fists again - a Sirius Black. There were a limited amount of things he could do to deserve her; being powerful seemed like the only feasible choice.  
  
And, somewhere at the back of his mind, there lurked the assumption that if he could just get powerful, if he could just make people respect him, she might want him again.   
  
Snape cast his eye over Narcissa’s bejewelled and heavily-laden dressing table. There were mirrors curled around its full width, and each of them reflected him from a different angle: his straggly, lank hair, his hooked nose, his sallow skin - flushed at the moment with hatred and bitterness - but usually an unhealthy-looking curdled white with a greenish tinge, like phosphorescent fungus.    
  
He sighed, and made an effort to collect himself. How to show that snooty ice-queen that he was not to be trifled with? He had been busy with his revenge on Potter, but there was always room for a diversion for someone who really deserved it. Come to think of it, there was no reason why the two schemes couldn’t inter-mesh.  
  
On the bed beside the dressing table was the latest issue of Witch Weekly. A relentlessly grinning Gilderoy Lockhart dazzled up at him from the front cover, underneath some bright green lettering which read: ‘Don’t Let the Magic Die: Fifty Spells that will Save your Relationship’. And, attached to the front cover was a little heart-shaped red paper purse. It seemed to contain some kind of jelly-thick liquid, because it made squishing sounds when it was squeezed. Written in curly pink letters on top of the heart were the words ‘Rosura: See Him Again for the First Time.’ And underneath, in slightly smaller writing: ‘Important: Do Not Exceed Stated Dosage’ Snape ripped it open, and poured the whole thing into the now gently-bubbling cauldron in front of him.     
  
The wonderful thing about potions was that they couldn’t be traced. They crept through their victims’ veins with impunity, silent, sudden and anonymous. Wands could be coaxed into revealing the spells that they’d performed, but no potion would ever betray its maker.     
  
All he needed to do now was let Lucius Malfoy into the castle.   
  
There were only two antidotes to Amortentia: sex or death (which, incidentally, was the motto that most Amortentia victims lived by). If you could get the object of your obsession into bed, the spell would be broken when you woke up the next morning. Pure-blood witches knew this, and always ensured that they were married (and had a good bodyguard on hand) first. But potions could do wonderful things - they could make you forget yourself.   
  
Narcissa was always in control. It would be fun to see this momentarily suspended. And it would be wonderful, too, to see that ice-bright complexion sullied. And he could accomplish these very simple feats with a potion that was given out as a free sample in Witch Weekly.     
  
Really, dark magic was not necessary if you had a dark mind.


	23. Rosura, Part Two

Snape walked down the slope of the hill to the Hogwarts gates. The sun was setting - its rosy glare was hitting him full in the face - and he would have to be back in the Slytherin common-room soon, or Argus Filch would have him scrubbing the Gryffindor Team’s Quidditch boots again (that had been a particularly cruel punishment, and it still rankled with Severus. As soon as he was done revenging himself on Potter and Narcissa, he was going to turn his attentions to Filch).   
  
To his surprise, Lucius Malfoy was standing on the other side of the gate, gripping the bars and gazing plaintively through them like a penitent criminal. His face seemed even paler with the plum-coloured evening light behind him, pouring over his shoulders.   
  
“Do you often spend your evenings here?” Snape asked, as soon as he’d got close enough for Malfoy to hear him.   
  
“I had a feeling about tonight,” Malfoy said fiercely, his dark blue eyes glittering. “I knew something was going to happen.” He hesitated slightly. “I’ve had the same feeling for the past five nights, actually, but it’s been growing stronger all the time, and I just know it’s going to be tonight that she changes her mind about me.”   
  
Snape leaned his back against the bars, looking up at the castle’s lighted windows. The sky was pink behind the Astronomy Tower, and the evening star had just begun to glimmer: Venus, he thought lightly - how ironic.   
  
“You could be right,” he said.   
  
“Has she spoken to you about me?”   
  
Snape suddenly remembered that he would bleed to death if he lied to Malfoy - it was a charm placed on trainee Death Eaters, to ensure their allegiance: if they lied to another Death Eater, their nose would start to bleed, and it wouldn’t stop until they told the truth. It wasn’t like him to forget something like this: the desire for revenge was making him reckless - like some kind of uncontrollable Gryffindor.   
  
“Yes,” he said; then, after a moment’s thought, he added. “She’s still quite upset with you.”   
  
“I can’t wait any longer, Severus,” Malfoy said. Snape turned to look at him, and noticed that he was unshaven: his hair was so light that this made him look as though slightly discoloured snow was clinging to his face. There were dark circles under his eyes and he looked as though he hadn’t changed his magnificent robes in days. Snape could smell the distinctive odour of sweat-soaked velvet. He had never known Malfoy to let his appearance go like this. He suddenly had misgivings about letting this man loose in the castle.   
  
“Where are you sleeping?” he asked thoughtfully.   
  
Malfoy gave a hollow laugh. “I’m not _sleeping_ anywhere, but I stay at The Hog’s Head. It is, for all its unpleasantness, near Narcissa, which makes it more luxurious than the grandest mansion.”   
  
“And you’d know,” Severus added, quite unhelpfully.   
  
“You are going to let me in, aren’t you?” Lucius prompted.   
  
Snape thought about what Narcissa had said to him in the Slytherin common room. For a moment, the sound of her cold voice resounded in his ears, reminding him about his cruelty to Lily, calling him pathetic. His insides were still crawling with hatred.   
  
“You know,” he said, forcing himself to be calm, “I never had the advantages that Potter had in life. That arrogant, pathetic,” Snape screwed up his face, as though there were no words hateful enough to describe what James Potter was, “ _brat_ \- he was born with people fawning all over him. And then, when he went to school, Dumbledore protected him - made sure he got away with everything, made sure he could bully his way to the top of every class. He’s always had everything he ever wanted thrown in his despicable, smug face. But arrogance is going to be his undoing, you’ll see - people like that don’t watch themselves - or they’d be sick, probably. ”   
  
Lucius was squeezing the bars with impatience. “What are you getting at, Severus?” he asked, through gritted teeth.    
  
“I’m just saying that when something useful fall into my hands, something Potter’s always taken for granted, I make the most of it.”  
  
“And when something falls into Potter’s hands that you’ve always taken for granted, no doubt _he’ll_ make the most of it,” Lucius muttered in an undertone.    
  
Snape stopped dead. “What are you talking about?”   
  
“The filth you used to associate with. Your mudblood friend. Potter likes her, doesn’t he?”   
  
The world lurched for Snape, as anger and panic blurred his vision, knocking him off balance. He almost reached out to steady himself, but a glimmer of rationality remained. Lucius couldn’t know; nobody knew. He’d been so careful. He had to be testing him, blundering into the accusation out of the desire to keep Severus down-trodden and obedient; it was random fire that had unwittingly struck home.   
  
Well, Snape knew he was more than a match for this stolid, spoilt, long-haired pretty-boy. There were skills that only being a deprived outcast could teach you, and one of them was quick-thinking.   
  
He had one decisive advantage: Malfoy thought he couldn’t lie to him.      
  
“You heard what I said to her that afternoon by the lake,” Snape said with a fierce, forced calm. “You were there. It wasn’t easy to make you out while I was hanging upside down, but you were there: I saw you. Didn’t I make it clear then who my real friends are? Haven’t I made it clear since?”   
  
Malfoy bristled. Snape was staring straight at him - his black eyes looking both angry and expressionless, hard and yet bottomless. People didn’t often make eye contact with Lucius Malfoy: they usually quailed under his stern, self-righteous gaze. There were rumours - Malfoy had put them about himself - that he was a peerless practitioner of mind magic: there were stories that he could send you mad with a single glance, that he could have you spilling your innermost secrets before you’d even shaken hands with him. But he withered beneath Snape’s pitiless stare: it was like smacking into a brick wall that you had mistaken for an immensity of darkness. Lucius looked away.    
  
“But, for the record,” Snape said, his voice softer this time, but no less fierce, “even the mudblood is too good for Potter.”   
  
Lucius settled into resentful silence; his thoughts had already begun to wander past the wrought iron gates and up to the castle. It was one of the strengths of the Malfoys that they didn’t dwell on defeat unduly. “I‘m sorry, Severus,” he muttered, “you were saying?”   
  
Snape tried to think his way back to the emotional state he’d been in before Malfoy had mentioned Lily. It wasn’t easy.   
  
Yes, there it was: cold, writhing hatred, and a determination to _do_ something about it.     
  
“I can’t let you in through the gates,” he said. “Hagrid’s the only one who can unlock them: that’s what it means to be Keeper of the Keys at Hogwarts - you _are_ the keys - only your hands can break the locking charm. I suppose he was chosen because he’s not easy to curse,” Severus mused, forgetting for a moment that his companion was rattling the bars in his impatience, “most spells just bounce straight off him - or because he isn’t a fully qualified wizard, so he can’t do that much damage: Dumbledore’s got this thing about setting defences that can only be broken by harmless people.”   
  
“So how am _I_ going to get in?” Lucius asked furiously.   
  
Severus toyed with the idea of letting him wait a little longer, but dismissed it. Lucius was a valuable friend: a pure-blooded Death Eater with unlimited gold did not beg you for help every day.    
  
“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” he said. “When something useful falls into my hands, I make the most of it.” He held up a piece of parchment that, at first, just appeared to be badly ink-stained. But then Lucius realized that the dots of ink were moving, and that there were lines around the dots, to mark out rooms and staircases: it was a map.   
  
“This is a map of Hogwarts,” Severus explained, “showing where everyone in the castle is at any one time. It’s Potter’s. I expect Dumbledore helped him make it - he pretends not to know what Potter and his sycophantic idiots get up to, but he knows. If you’re caught, you tell them you got in using this map, and that you found it in the Three Broomstick after Potter and his gang had been drinking there on Saturday. Have you got that?”  
  
Lucius nodded and reached his hands through the bars hungrily, grasping for the map. Snape let him have it. “Use one of the secret passages into the castle from Hogsmeade,” he said. “There’s one in the cellar of Honey dukes.”     
  
“But how do I get into the Slytherin common room?”   
  
“I know the password, remember? It’s dragon‘s-blood.” He threw a shirt and Slytherin tie at Lucius. “Put those on,” he said, “you need to look like you belong here. And try not to stare at anyone: the best way to be inconspicuous is to look as though you accept things.”   
  
“I’ve been looking as though I accept things for my entire life,” Lucius muttered.   
  
“I’m sure it’s been terrible for you,” Severus said sarcastically. “Now, this is as far as I go. I’m not helping you once you’re in, so don’t get caught. And if you do, remember you got that map from Potter.”   
  
“Thank you, Severus,” Malfoy said eagerly and, with a swish of his cloak, he was off up the road to Hogsmeade.  
  
Severus watched him go for a little while, torn between feelings of gloating enjoyment and prickling uneasiness. At least Lily would approve of this idea - or, at any rate, a milder version of this idea - one that didn’t run the risk of ending in murder. It was as close to Lily’s approval as any of Snape’s ideas had ever come, so he wasn‘t too bothered about the particulars. It taught everyone a lesson they badly needed to learn: Narcissa, for the first time in her life, would learn the meaning of need; Lucius was already learning the meaning of humility and, if he was caught, Potter would learn the meaning of pain (an education that would last the rest of his life, if Snape had anything to do with it)   
  
All told, he couldn’t understand why he was feeling so anxious.   
  
  
Narcissa bottled the potion she’d been brewing, and held it up to the light of the candle on her dressing-table, letting the fire-light filter jewel-like through its black-red depths.   
  
She hadn’t expected it to be red. Perhaps it was the effect of the Armadillo Bile. If Severus Snape was good for nothing else, he knew his Potions. What a perfect specimen he was: how could anyone be easier to manipulate? Completely alone in the magical world, without friends or family; desperate for glory and approval; clever, without the inconvenience of scruples. And he looked so… interesting.  
  
Narcissa was so used to beholding beautiful things that she found Snape’s greasy-haired, hook-nosed, sallow-skinned, stringy-limbed appearance fascinating - almost appealing, in a way she didn’t want to acknowledge. The idea of beauty being peripheral to attraction unsettled her. Beauty was all she had - and, if it wasn’t enough, then the road to power would be more difficult than she’d initially thought.    
  
There was just the matter that her perfume - her favourite invention, the wonderful mixture of Hemlock and Vanilla that befuddled men’s wits - didn’t work on him. He was the first man she’d ever encountered who was immune, and she wondered how she could find out why. Dissecting him was an appealing idea; but magic didn’t always work visibly. She would have to talk to him, gain his trust, and then, if that didn’t work, dissect him. Or, at any rate, have him dissected for her. Narcissa was indolent even in her passions; she enjoyed the sensation of having things done for her.     
  
Well, now there was the matter of testing the potion. In the dream-like state she often entered when gazing in her mirror, the state she liked to think of as listening to the promptings of her noble blood, she had thrown random ingredients together, and now she wasn’t entirely sure which ones she had used. It would be better not to drink the potion herself; she would have to find some mudblood to test it on. They were expendable; and, if the potions made the creature beautiful - well, Narcissa didn’t begrudge them that - the effects were only temporary, and it would be sweet for them to taste the thrill of being wanted, for once in their pointless lives. In fact, in a spirit of generosity, she frequently tested her potions on Mary MacDonald. That girl needed all the help she could get.   
  
She threw on her cloak, fastened with the silver insignia of the Blacks, and went in search of mudbloods. Lamentably, the castle was swarming with them these days, and they did not keep to themselves in a shabby corner of their common-rooms, withdrawing into the shadows whenever a real witch or wizard passed them, as they used to. Narcissa’s mother had told her that, when she was at Hogwarts, before Dumbledore had corrupted the place, the mud bloods had had to sit at the back of the class, and were put in detention for daring to speak to their betters.   
  
She entered the Great Hall and cast around the Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Gryffindor tables for the filth. She had not expected to find one sitting at her own table.   
  
But there she was. The red-haired Gryffindor was brazenly sitting at the Slytherin table, talking to Narcissa’s unruly sister, Andromeda. The girls were sunk so deep in conversation that they didn‘t notice that the other Slytherin students had cleared a wide circle around them, or that the entire table was alive with outraged mutterings and angry stares. The two of them had their heads very close together, the mudblood’s red hair mingling with Andromeda’s chestnut; they were whispering and laughing, hardly noticing what they were eating. The Slytherin table were not the only ones staring in disbelief. James Potter was watching sullenly from under his untidy bird’s nest of jet-black hair (it was looking more untidy every day - Narcissa found this disregard for personal grooming highly offensive), and Sirius Black was muttering darkly to Lupin.  
  
The atmosphere in the Great Hall was thick with resentment - Narcissa got the feeling that violence might break out at any moment, and the only ones who seemed unaware of it were the chattering girls at the Slytherin table who had caused it.       
  
Narcissa, who couldn’t imagine being unaware of the gaze of others, looked at them for a while: she was shocked and even a little beguiled by that kind of independence.  
  
But she was also worried for her sister. Andromeda had always been prone to these kind of defiant spectacles; she had talked too much with their blood-traitor cousin, Sirius. And the world was starting to grow intolerant of her eccentricities. Didn’t she care that that filth was sitting at the same table at which their female ancestors had sat for generations, plotting revolutions and securing husbands?   
  
Narcissa’s worry turned to anger and she went over to them, the thin bottle of potion hidden up her sleeve.    
  
“I hate to interrupt this charming little gathering,” Narcissa muttered, sitting down opposite them, and making sure the rest of the table noticed the reluctance with which she did this, “but I would like to let you know, Andromeda, that, if you continue to disgrace us with this filth, I’ll tell father how little you care for his name, and he’ll cut you off without a Galleon.” (A Galleon was the lowest amount of money Narcissa could imagine; she had never so much as seen a Knut).     
  
Andromeda stared at her sister. “What filth?” she asked angrily.    
  
Narcissa was astonished to see that the mudblood was smiling mischievously. “I think she means me, ‘Dromeda.”   
  
“She wouldn’t be that thick,” Andromeda said with quiet fury. “Would you, ‘Cissa?”   
  
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Narcissa went on, not deigning to reply, “the entire school is staring at you. I’m ashamed of you.”   
  
Andromeda was still staring at her sister, as though she had never seen her before. “Not half as ashamed as I am of you,” she said quietly.    
  
Lily was still smiling. “It’s alright, ‘Dromeda,” she said. “You’re not actually surprised, are you? Let’s let the little princess get back to her nail-filing. Why don’t we go eat over there with Sarah?” she nodded towards the Ravenclaw table where a frizzy haired girl was watching them, her mouth a curly line of sympathy.    
  
“We‘re not going anywhere,” said Andromeda angrily. “Narcissa, this is Lily. I don’t think you’ve been properly introduced before.”   
  
“How dare you?” Narcissa growled. “That’s like trying to introduce me to a rock.”   
  
“I’d like to introduce her to a rock,” Lily muttered, and Andromeda giggled.     
  
“How dare you?” Narcissa said again. “My family have sat at this table for five hundred generations!”  
  
“What an achievement!” Lily exclaimed. “How I wish my family could master the art of sitting at tables!”  
  
Andromeda grinned. “Oh, it’s not just the sitting,” she added sarcastically, “they also managed to pick up knives and forks, and eat with them.”   
  
“And it only took them five hundred generations?” Lily asked, with mock astonishment. “Good heavens! Your family really is superior, Narcissa.”   
  
Narcissa’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “Do not speak to me,” she warned. “Do not soil my name with your filthy muggle lips. My ancestors could have crushed yours into the dust. You were only allowed to be born because of their forbearance.”   
  
“Well, what’s done is done, and here I am,” Lily said quickly, her eyes bright with amusement. “What are you going to do about it, Narcissa?”    
  
“There’s more magic in my little finger than you have in your entire body!” Narcissa hissed, starting to lose her icy composure now.    
  
“Why don’t you prove it?”   
  
“How about _I_ prove it?” said a voice. All three girls looked over, to see the smouldering black eyes and twisted mahogany wand of Bellatrix directed at them. She was leaning a careless elbow on the table and her heavy eye-lids were drooping lazily; she was talking in a deadly whisper, yet it carried as though it had been magically magnified in the suddenly-silent hall. “How would that be, mudblood? I have the same ancestors as Narcissa - why don‘t you let me prove how much better they were than yours?”   
  
Lily didn’t flinch; she simply raised her eyebrows. “In front of all these witnesses?” she asked. “Go ahead. I’d love to see you expelled.”     
  
“You won’t be able to see much after what I’m going to do to that pretty little face of yours,” Bellatrix answered in a sing-song voice. “I’ll hurl more than a cauldron at you this time, mudblood.”   
  
Lily narrowed her eyes. “What did you say?”  
  
Bella seemed to realize that she’d said too much, but she went on anyway, because she scorned to display fear, or even prudence, in front of a mudblood.   
  
“You heard me. Snape covered up for me, because he’s my devoted little half-blood these days, but I did it, and I’m only sorry that it didn’t kill you.”    
  
Her smile was so wide and so humourless that it appeared to be a snarl; just an excuse to bare her teeth. She was gazing at Lily with pure, inveterate hatred, but Lily didn’t look away. Narcissa was starting to feel a grudging admiration for the girl. There were not many people who could look into Bella’s ferocious eyes without turning to look for an escape route, but this creature was managing it. Still, her admiration did not stop Narcissa from taking advantage of the distraction in order to empty the bottle of potion into Lily’s pumpkin juice.       
  
“Bella, don’t be an idiot,” said Andromeda.   
  
Lily had folded her arms and narrowed her eyes to two deadly slits. “Go ahead, Bella,” she said. “Nobody’s stopping you.”   
  
Bella raised her wand but Narcissa put a hand on her wrist to restrain her. “Don’t, Bella,” she said calmly.   
  
Even in the midst of her fury, Bellatrix was startled. This was the first time Narcissa had spoken to her since her affair with Lucius Malfoy had been discovered.  
  
“This piece of slime isn’t worth getting thrown out of Hogwarts for,” she said. “Anyway, I have a feeling that, outside of Hogwarts, when her teachers aren’t there to molly-coddle her, she’s going to get taught a lesson soon enough - and it’s one lesson she won’t be able to boast about her marks for.”    
  
Grudgingly, Bella put her wand back in the pocket of her robes, and allowed Narcissa to lead her away from the Slytherin table. Heads turned to watch them as they left the Hall - even the teachers up at the staff table seemed to be following their progress. Professor McGonagall never took her eyes off Bellatrix - cool and professional as she usually was, the sight of Bellatrix always made her nostrils flare and her mouth compress itself into a very thin line.     
  
Once outside in the cool, shady marble Entrance Hall, Narcissa released her sister’s hand and tried to walk back to the dungeons, but Bella held her back. “Why did you do that, ‘Cissa?”   
  
“Why did I stop you from getting yourself expelled?” she asked coldly. “Because you are family. And family is everything. Why do you think I poisoned Malfoy and not you? Because he made a fool of both of us, and Black women avenge their wrongs; they do not squabble amongst themselves, and certainly not over men. My loyalties are to my blood, Bella, always.”    
  
Bella, for all her ferocity, seemed slightly in awe of this kind of cold resolution. Narcissa was smaller than her; all her limbs were delicately framed, where Bella’s were bulky and muscular; Bella’s eyes were a fiery, incandescent black, like glowing coals, where Narcissa’s were a placid grey, yet the little, ice-pale creature with the dead grey eyes was suddenly awe-inspiring to Bella.   
  
“You poisoned Malfoy?” she whispered.   
  
“You do not need to thank me,” Narcissa replied. “That is assumed.”   
  
“Is he dead?”   
  
“Not yet. I didn’t see why I should get my hands dirty, when there were potions that could make him kill himself, and in very interesting ways.”  
  
Bella suddenly seemed abashed. “I’m sorry, ‘Cissa,” she murmured. “It’s these filthy mudbloods swarming over the castle, they get me worked up, and I…”   
  
“There is no need,” Narcissa interrupted, “to apologise. I‘m going to make him pay, Bella. Nobody will ever disrespect our family again.”   
  
The two girls embraced with an odd, jerking motion; they were not used to showing affection this way. In fact, they had been encouraged to compete against one another remorselessly, but somehow, against all their conditioning, they had developed a bond; it was true that it was a bond based on their mutual distrust of anyone who didn‘t share their noble blood, but it was the only bond either of them had ever known - and, even if it was for the wrong reasons, it had the right effect. They would always look out for one another   
  
Across the room, in the shadows of the marble staircase, Lucius Malfoy leaned his back against the cold stone banister and closed his eyes, trying to master the anger than was rising up inside his chest. It was a battle he knew he was going to lose, but he tried, all the same. For Narcissa.


	24. Rosura, Part Three

Snape went back to the deserted dungeon classroom he sometimes used for studying, when the library was too full of rowdy morons, and the Slytherin common-room too full of sneering pure-bloods. Darkness and solitude was necessary for performing certain kinds of spell - and, anyway, he didn’t want to be observed reading the kind of books he’d sneaked out of the library of The Hanged Man in Knockturn Alley. That place was a ghoulish treasure-trove: Snape had found books on Necromancy, dark curses, the breeding of ferocious magical creatures and the summoning demons: all of them involving wonderful, technical, ambitious magic that Dumbledore was simply afraid of. Magic, as far as Snape was concerned, shouldn’t be a slave to ideas, especially not the feeble ideas of morality and kindness that Dumbledore entertained.    
  
He waved his wand to ignite the burning torches set in brackets in the walls. They made the damp stone iridescent with reflected light. He liked being down here at the cool roots of the castle - the stone seemed to absorb some of his anger and frustration - and focus whatever was left that couldn’t be absorbed (because all the stone in the castle couldn’t accommodate the entirety of Snape’s anger). Down here, every grievance with the world turned into a grievance with James Potter.     
  
“Finally,” said a wonderfully familiar voice, one that sent a surge of electric pleasure hurtling through his body. “I was beginning to think you’d never get here.”  
  
Snape turned, and was confronted with a wonderful sight. The stone seemed to have absorbed and projected his dreams, as well as his nightmares.  
  
Lily was standing there - pink-cheeked and smiling. The firelight was gilding her ruby-red hair, and she had let a lock of it fall over her right eye - as she always did when she was nervous. Her left eye, however, was blazing and brilliant - it was directing a look of pure audacity at him, and Snape, starved as he was of those eyes and that look, had to look away for fear of betraying the sudden, choking happiness that had seized him by the throat and was lifting him off the floor.  
  
“I thought you’d be here,” she said. “I’ve got so much to tell you.”       
  
She was smiling - actually smiling - at him: it was a nervous, excited kind of smile, one that reminded him very much of their childhood. She had smiled that way whenever she was about to share a secret with him - some new spell, or wonderful place to go - whenever she was simply bubbling over with bliss, but shy of revealing the full extent of her rapture. Lily was like that; she had a tremendous capacity for joy, but she had learned to feel that it was somehow indecent to express it. He supposed it was growing up in Manchester, with the grey skyscrapers, grey cloud and grey faces. He supposed, too, that it might have had something to do with him telling her not to behave ‘like a squealing Hufflepuff’ all the time, but she had no idea, because he’d never been able to tell her, and now he probably never would, that it was beautiful, incredible, unthinkable, adorable that she had lived all these years as a ‘mudblood’ in the magical world and she could still melt with rapture when she discovered a new charm or a book on healing magic.  
  
“Well?” Lily prompted. “Are you going to say something? If it’s ‘get lost, mud blood’, I have to warn you, I put the Selective Verbalization Charm on every member of Slytherin house - it was quite a complicated piece of magic, actually - so I’d be more creative in my abuse, if I were you.”    
  
Snape just looked at her. The surge of pleasure he’d felt at the sight of her seemed to have short-circuited his brain. Her skin was glowing - and, in the half-light of the dungeon, it was luminous - a tender pink, like apple blossom.  
  
Too impatient to worry about making sense, and too nervous to look at her, he blurted out:    
  
“Lily, I’m so sorry - ,”   
  
“No, I’m sorry,” she interrupted.    
  
But Snape wouldn’t be deterred. “You know I didn’t hit you with that cauldron,” he stammered, “- it was Bella, she - ,”   
  
“I know,” Lily said. “She let it slip when she was threatening me tonight.”   
  
Snape would ordinarily have questioned her about this, but right now his heart was over-brimming with apologies, and he wanted to get them all out of the way before she came to her senses and started ignoring him again. “And thing - the thing I called you…” he murmured.  
  
“Very smart,” Lily murmured playfully. “I wouldn’t want you to be rushed to the Hospital Wing right now, not when I’ve finally got you alone.”   
  
Had Severus been listening properly, he might have thought this an odd thing to say, but he was dazed with happiness and relief, and carried away by the momentum of the apologies he’d been silently, hopelessly, repeatedly rehearsing for six months.    
  
“I didn’t mean it,” he said. “You know I didn’t mean it. You know I think you’re - ,” Snape paused breathlessly - he was stuck at the same impasse as before, but he was feeling much more desperate this time.  
  
Lily came to his rescue. “I didn’t think you meant it,” she said soothingly, holding his eyes with hers. And Snape was almost melting with gratitude and love - he could feel his eyes prickling alarmingly. He looked down at the floor and, euphoric and uncomfortable, he mumbled. “I was angry. It was that Potter -,” but even Potter’s hated name couldn’t be pronounced with its usual venom - in fact, he could hardly remember what it was that Potter had done to get so hated, because Lily was smiling at him, the way she used to.      
  
She pressed a finger to his lips. Her face was so close to his that he could see nothing but those intense, evergreen eyes.  
  
“I’ve missed you,” she murmured.   
  
Snape just smiled stupidly - he was too happy to even berate himself for it.   
  
Suddenly, she was undoing his tie, laughing and clumsy with eagerness, and pressing her hot lips to his, and planting kisses all over his face and neck - kisses that seared through every nerve in his body and made him shudder with bliss. For a moment, Snape was too shocked to respond. He let her throw her arms around him, and suffered her passionate kisses, as though she were some kind of affectionate aunt. Then the reality of his situation dawned on him and, with it, a spreading sense of greed. He clasped her to him, kissing her hot face, tasting her skin, wanting to press her into his heart, so that there would always be a Lily-shaped impression in it, wherever he went.    
  
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Lily said, laughing.       
  
Snape thought of telling her that he couldn’t believe it, either, but he couldn’t assemble the words. Gradually, however, as he tried to catch his breath, and screwed up his entire body against the fierce, raging bliss that was trying to find expression, and that would make him say stupid, incoherent things that he didn’t want to inflict on her just now, doubts began to occur to him, as they always did on the few occasions when happiness had seemed likely to overcome him. Snape didn’t believe he deserved to be happy and, because he didn’t believe it, nobody else believed it either.     
  
This wasn’t like Lily. Her skin underneath her school shirt was hot, and her eyes were over-bright, as though with fever.    
  
Clinging to his last lingering shreds of resistance, Snape pulled away from her. He saw her pretty laughter falter. Half relenting, he pulled her back towards him and touched a curl of her red hair. This was all he had left. He could already feel rationality draining out of him, like sands out of an hourglass, and he didn’t know how to say what he knew he had to say.   
  
“Lily,” he breathed, “you- you’re OK, aren’t you?”   
  
“Never better,” she said, smiling. Her cheeks were glowing coral pink and her skin was hot to the touch. She did look feverish, but this only made her beauty more brilliant. Snape tried to look away from those blazing green eyes, and said:   
  
“Because you seem… different.”   
  
Lily’s started kissing him impatiently, but he pulled her back. Now there were only a few grains left in the hourglass, and he had to be sure that this was real and she was alright, so he blurted out. “It’s just… I wouldn’t want to… you know… take advantage.”   
  
“Really? I thought you were a Slytherin.”   
  
“I am, but…”   
  
“I feel fine. Really.”      
  
The next time her lips touched his, blissful oblivion gripped Snape - he forgot everything: the only thing he seemed to remember was her name, so he said it eight or nine times until she laughed and told him she knew who she was, now more than ever.   
  
“You’re amazing,” he mumbled, burying his face in her ruby-red hair, relishing the delicious ginger-bread smell of her shampoo and wondering vaguely at the curls. Lily’s hair never curled like this.       
  
And her skin was hot and pink, and she had a fever…   
  
Realization shuddered through him like an electric shock. Cold, prickling horror coursed through every vein. “You’ve taken the Rosura,” he muttered, in a kind of trance of pain.  
  
“I know,” she said, with a cheerful shrug. “I recognize the symptoms: pink skin, curly hair, insatiable thirst for men. My hormones may be going crazy, Severus, but there’s nothing wrong with my mind.”  
  
Severus withdrew from her, dizzy with horror, and turned to stare at the dripping dungeon walls. He felt grief-stricken, humiliated - he’d been tricked into revealing his feelings under false pretences. Burning self-hatred rose in his throat - he’d been so stupid, so stupid, to believe she felt the same way. He’d been so desperate to speak to her, after all these months of separation, he hadn‘t realized how uncharacteristically she’d been behaving.  
  
Except that it wasn’t uncharacteristic, really, for Lily to be joyful, tender-hearted and shy. Rosura usually turned women into predatory monsters like Bellatrix.  
  
“Were you going to tell me?” he asked in a hollow voice.   
  
Lily bit her lip. “I thought it might complicate things.”    
  
Snape didn’t respond. He continued to stare at the wall. Wave after wave of miserable realization was crashing over him - horrible possibilities kept occurring to him. When the potion wore off - and it would be within a matter of hours: Rosura’s symptoms were intense but short-lived - she’d know everything. He wasn’t worried that she’d laugh at him - in his darkest paranoid fantasies, Snape had never imagined that she would laugh at him, because she was too kind. But her kindness was immeasurably worse: she’d pity him; the very idea made his skin crawl. He couldn’t bear the thought of her pitying him. He’d rather die than know she pitied him.    
  
And then humiliation gave way to aching sadness. He had never been so close to happiness, and now he was worse off than where he’d started. They could never be friends again.   
  
“Does it matter?” she asked.   
  
“ _Does it matter_?”   
  
“I mean,” Lily added, in a small voice, “don’t you want me?”   
  
Snape turned to look at her. Her voice took a while to reach him, as though she was whispering to him from the opposite side of a great chasm. “It’s just… you’re going to be so mad at me when the potion wears off,” he murmured.    
  
“I know,” Lily shrugged with cheerful understanding. “You can have me, guaranteed, now, and never again, or possibly someday, and maybe forever. It’s a tough choice. Especially for a Slytherin.”   
  
“Yeah…”   
  
“You know, magic is never completely arbitrary,” she said, in that same patient, quizzical tone, as though they were simply reasoning out a problem in class. “Sometimes potions show you who a person really is, what they‘re really thinking. Admittedly, you can’t believe a word I say right now, but you can’t argue with the fact that I came here, knowing you’d be here - I mean, I kissed two Hufflepuff boys on the way, because Rosura is a very powerful potion, but I didn’t stay with them. I came to find you. ”     
  
Snape nodded, only half hearing her. The bit about the Hufflepuff boys made it through his confusion, and he wished it hadn’t.  
  
He couldn’t, he couldn’t, take advantage of Lily, could he? She was Lily.   
  
But he never got to choose, because it was at that point that a scream tore the glittering darkness like a knife, and Snape realized that Malfoy was loose in the castle and Narcissa hadn’t taken the Rosura.   
  
Calmly, as though commenting on the weather, he said: “I think Narcissa’s going to die.”   
  
Lily just looked at him. She reached her hand out to touch his face, and then drew it back again. There seemed to be a terrible struggle going on behind those glittering, green eyes.   
  
Suddenly, she looked up at him - her expression one of steely resolution - and said. “We’d better go help her, then, hadn’t we?”  
  
Snape stared at her. “Even if it means you don’t get to have me?”   
  
“I’ll live,” she said, in a voice that was both sarcastic and mournful. “Narcissa won’t, if we don’t do something now.”   
  
Snape continued to look at her. The intense emotions of the past few minutes must have made him delirious, because a smile was creeping across his face. “You’re amazing,” he said.   
  
“You said that already.”   
  
“I wasn’t in possession of all the facts, then,” he told her, grinning through the haze of pain.


	25. Rosura, Part Four

Narcissa shook her head to try and clear it. Memory was coming back to her in steady drips - first an image, then a feeling. There was a dull, throbbing pain in her temple, but she tried to concentrate on remembering, instinctively reaching up to make sure that her hair was neatly tucked into its sleek, flawless little knot. With a groan, she realized that it was coming loose, and a few lawless, silvery strands had already escaped; she could feel them tickling her face.   
  
But she could see nothing. She recognised the damp, mossy smell of the castle dungeons - it was comforting: it reminded her of her first days at school, sitting at the back of Potions classes and observing the other students complacently, noting with satisfaction that their robes were second-hand, or their cheeks were pudgy; she was indeed the prettiest girl in the world; her family had always told her so, but it was gratifying all the same to see for herself.   
  
Overlaying the familiar smell of the dungeons, however, was a sharply unfamiliar one: the odour of sweat. Narcissa had never permitted a smell like that to be in the same room as her. She wrinkled her nose and peered uselessly into the darkness. Had she fainted, and been brought back to the common-room? No, there would be noises in the common-room - all Narcissa could hear at the moment was a distant roar, as of running water.    
  
She tried to reassemble her memories. She had been following the mudblood, Evans, to observe the effects of the potion she’d slipped into her pumpkin juice. She’d followed her to a dungeon classroom, watching her behaviour with increasing puzzlement. Twice, as she passed a boy going in the other direction, Evans had pulled him into a lingering kiss, without a word of explanation, and then, just as suddenly, departed, leaving the boy staring after her in red-faced bewilderment.  
  
Narcissa remembered waiting outside the classroom that Evans had entered. After about ten minutes, Severus had come down the corridor - Narcissa had drawn back into the shadows. As he entered the classroom, Narcissa toyed with the idea of stopping him. She felt a little possessive of Severus; she would never have gone out with him - imagine being seen in public with such an unattractive little oddball! - but she wanted to be the only girl to tease him. Still, she was curious to see what Severus would do. Would he be loyal to his Death Eater principles and reject the mudblood, despite the temptation? (because she was attractive, Narcissa was grudgingly forced to admit, in a boisterous, unstudied kind of way)  
  
They had been in there for some minutes: Narcissa had edged towards the door, trying to listen, but their voices were hushed and soft - Severus could not have been insulting her, or torturing her, but then Severus was subtle; he didn’t torture the way Bella did - he chipped away at people, rather than shattering them. He would probably put the mudblood in a trance and make her walk off a cliff, or steal her memories.   
  
And then… what? Here Narcissa’s memory faltered. A hand on her shoulder, a flash of red light…  
  
“I’m glad you’re awake, Miss Black. We haven’t spoken in a long time, and I have much to tell you. It broke my heart to have to stun you - well, broke it into slightly smaller pieces, anyway - but it was necessary. You would have been frightened if I hadn‘t done it.”   
  
Narcissa sat up, terror thrilling through every nerve in her body. She felt as though she’d been showered with chips of ice. It couldn‘t be him. Dumbledore would never have let him into the castle. He had no _business_ being in the castle.    
  
“This is an oubliette,” said the voice that sounded so much like Malfoy’s. “That’s French, you know, for a place of forgetting. And a place in which to be forgotten. My father used to imprison troublesome students down here when he was teaching at the castle. He understood how to break spirits, not like those walking disgraces to the name of wizardry that teach here today. Three days down here and, when they returned to class, his students would be obedient little angels. That’s the wonderful thing about children - they’re so impressionable - hurt them now, and they’ll fear you forever.”   
  
Narcissa was too frightened to speak. She had nothing in the darkness, not beauty, not wealth, not family connections. She was far away from her powerful family and her still-more powerful dressing table, where she brewed her potions and cosmetics for befuddling men’s wits. All she had here was her mind. Still, that was one thing she had that Malfoy didn’t.   
  
Suddenly, there was light in the darkness. It burned into Narcissa’s eyes, and she put her hand up to her face (the first time she had ever willingly obscured her appearance). Malfoy had uncovered a storm lantern - it illuminated a little way around them, placing them in the middle of a bubble of light.   
  
In later years, she would think of this quality of light quite differently. When she read to her little son in bed, leaning against her husband’s shoulder, with her wand fixed to the headboard, illuminating the pages of the book and her boy’s ruddy little face, she would silently adore their little bubble of light, their charmed circle. Outside of it, there was an immensity of darkness: the spectre of the Death Eater trials, the humiliation of having people who had previously cowered at their approach spitting on their shoes, the arrival of Howlers and hate-mail with the morning post-owls. Narcissa had never been hounded before: it made their circle of light at bed-time all the brighter.  
  
Sometimes, she would look back on that moment in the oubliette and muse lazily - as she did everything - about the chaos that could lead to contentment. She would listen to her husband’s snores - he always fell asleep, while Draco was always wide awake, clambering over her, putting his pudgy little hands on her shoulder, hiding his face in her hair - and remember how miserable she had made him, and feel, for the first time in her life, a twinge of conscience.  
  
It was always driven out of her mind by Draco’s happy little gurgles, and the necessity of keeping him entertained, but it was there, all the same - the tiniest, bewildering recognition that, while her beloved female ancestors might have been clever, they were not kind, and that perhaps, somewhere, there were better examples to follow.   
  
But here and now in the oubliette, the bubble of light was hateful. Apart from anything else, Narcissa felt sure that it wasn’t flattering.     
  
“Now, how many magical ways of escaping a place like this do you think there are?” Malfoy asked happily. “A brave child might try a Levitation Charm, or a Springing Jinx. Perhaps they might have tried yelling for help,” Malfoy was pacing around now, and there was a worrying crunch beneath his feet as he walked - Narcissa thought uncomfortably of bones or crumbling rock, but she couldn’t see - her eyes had still not adjusted to the sudden glare of the storm lantern - and she didn’t dare investigate the platform by touch, for fear of what she might find.    
  
“Or sending a Patronus to summon another teacher?” Lucius resumed. “Because even under Dippet’s regime - that’s Dumbledore’s predecessor, Armando Dippet - locking children in solitary confinement for days on end was prohibited. But my father thought of everything. You are aware of the enchantments that prevent a wizard from Apparating or Disapparating inside a certain space? Hogwarts was already laced with such spells - my father simply enhanced them. This entire room is impregnated with a magical dampening field. It took him the best part of a decade to construct it. Here, a wizard must live as a muggle - with his wits and his hands. And prolonged exposure to the dampening field can damage ones powers permanently.”   
  
There was a pause. Narcissa could now see a little in the rusty glare of the lantern - Malfoy’s face, wild and unshaven, and around his feet, as though bowed down to worship him, were bones. She had been right. The platform was littered with them.   
  
“You see the brilliance of it, Narcissa?  Repeat offenders were soon rendered unable to repeat the offence. Magical impotence awaits anyone who spends too long in here.” Malfoy’s voice became rather strained. “My father used to threaten me with incarceration in this room whenever I misbehaved. Until very recently, it was one of my worst nightmares - but no longer, Narcissa,” his voice had lowered to a fierce hiss, and Narcissa shuddered. “Now I know that there is something worse than a life without magic: a life without you.”  
  
He adjusted the beam of the storm lantern, so that it shone on her face, and Narcissa was blinded again; terrified and exposed, she could do nothing but concentrate on breathing - that was enough of a struggle. The idea of escape in this state of total vulnerability seemed as far off as the moon.   
  
“We can be happy here,” Malfoy said, his voice warm with enthusiasm. “Nobody else knows of this room’s existence: there will be no-one to take you away from me - and they would not succeed even if they tried. As long as we are together, prison is a paradise: nothing else matters - not magic, not power struggles, not blood. Neither Dumbledore, the Dark Lord, nor the war between them, can reach us here, my dear Narcissa.”  
  
Narcissa finally found her voice, and she was surprised to find it steady. “Lucius,” she said. “You’re not really in love with me. I gave you Amortentia.”   
  
“You can’t tell me what I’m feeling isn’t real,” Malfoy said hoarsely.   
  
“Alright,” she said in a placatory whisper. “Even if it is real, it isn’t right. You wouldn’t feel this way on your own.”   
  
“That is quite irrelevant, Narcissa,” he snapped. “We will never know how I would have felt if you hadn’t poisoned me, because you did, and I am in no mood for philosophical speculation.”   
  
Silence resettled around them, broken only by the sound of rushing water far below. Narcissa wondered how far it was - whether she could jump off the platform and still survive. It would be a back-up plan, she decided. Right now, she still had her charm, even if she had no magic.   
  
“Alright,” she said again. “This is easily solved, Lucius. We don’t have to stay here, away from our families, gradually turning into muggles. Imagine how you would feel if there were a revolution, if the Dark Lord seized power, if there were a new regime, and you weren’t part of it. Or the opposite,” she added desperately, “what if the Dark Lord is defeated and Dumbledore continues to let wizard blood degenerate, until magic is driven to the brink of extinction? How could we live with ourselves, knowing that we hadn’t done everything in our power to prevent it?”   
  
Malfoy was silent for a few moments. “You said there was a solution,” he prompted eventually.   
  
“I will marry you,” she said simply. “I promise to marry you. We can leave this place in the knowledge that we will not be separated, whatever happens.”   
  
Another silence. Narcissa couldn’t have sworn to it, but she thought she heard a soft chuckle.   
  
“I hope you will not think me cynical, my beloved,” he said, “but I’m afraid I don’t believe you.”   
  
“I swear it!” Narcissa protested. “I’ll…” she paused, considering, “I’ll make the Unbreakable Vow,” she finished, in a small voice.   
  
She had planned to be the Mistress of Malfoy Manor, whatever happened. She had intended either to marry him or be left his entire fortune in his will if he killed himself. She wouldn’t have to break the Vow, if all went to plan.   
  
But things were so far from going to plan that she had to bite her lip to keep back tears. This was not the future of luxury and influence that she’d envisioned for herself. And the idea of losing her powers… becoming a muggle… she would be worse than dead… she would be a disgrace.     
  
“You can‘t make the Vow here,” Malfoy remarked. “Magic doesn’t work here, remember? At any rate, Dumbledore is no fool. I would be very surprised if there were not enchantments in place to prevent the Unbreakable Vow from being made anywhere in this castle.”   
  
“Then you must trust me,” she implored.   
  
“It isn’t worth the risk. You don’t seem to understand me. I want nothing else than to be with you, nothing else. What would I have to gain by allowing you to leave this place?”  
  
“Don’t you want my happiness?” she asked accusingly.   
  
“Ideally, yes, but it isn’t paramount amongst my priorities.”   
  
“And you call this love?”   
  
Malfoy suddenly lurched towards her. Narcissa scrambled away, and felt one hand slip off the edge of the platform. She screamed, teetering, but Malfoy caught her other wrist and pulled her up, so that her face was level with his. “No,” he breathed, “love is precisely what I did not call it. Amortentia is what I call it. A very dangerous potion, that sentimental, self-important young witches imagine will make their fortune: an understandable ambition for the ones that didn’t already have a fortune. Everything you could possibly desire, you already had, including my heart, but it wasn’t enough, was it, Narcissa? You had to have my soul.”   
  
“You slept with my sister!” she shouted, throwing caution to the winds.   
  
“Only because I thought you were too good for me!”  
  
“What?”   
  
“And let me tell you something about your sister,” Malfoy growled. “She knew what she was doing. I didn’t bribe her with diamonds or dragon‘s blood, I didn’t promise her a job or a husband, I didn’t even pretend that I wasn’t in love with her sister. She had her eyes open - ,”   
  
“I do not,” Narcissa roared, her voice echoing shrilly in the vaulted darkness, “want to hear about it!”   
  
There was silence. Narcissa listened to the echoes of her words, fluttering like bats around the oubliette. She had been advancing on him, and she was sure that the edge of the plateau was only a few inches behind his feet. The idea of pushing him flitted briefly across her mind.    
  
When Malfoy’s voice returned, it was calm and menacing. “You never wanted me,” he murmured, “you just wanted to be wanted… That’s right, isn’t it?”    
  
“The first part is right,” she replied acidly.   
  
“So you thought you’d give me a love potion,” he went on, his voice rather higher than usual. “And you didn’t want to make any mistakes - it would have to be a strong love potion, something that would humiliate me, something that would make me beg, something that would bring the House of Malfoy to its knees - all to satisfy your pathetic, teenage vanity. You’d heard about your ancestor, Claudia Black, using Amortentia, and you decided - Merlin knows how, because you’re not the brightest of girls, beautiful as you undoubtedly are - that you would make some. But you did not understand the magic you were using, as your clever ancestor did. Amortentia does not, _does not_ , produce love. That is a profound misapprehension. What it produces is need. And need is something you’ve never understood. If you did understand it, you would have been prepared for anything from me. You would never have let me live to continue needing you, because there is nothing in the world more dangerous than a creature that needs you.”   
  
All this time he’d been holding her wrist - Narcissa could feel her fingers going numb - but now he threw it from him contemptuously. Yet he couldn’t seem to keep away. He kept his face by hers, breathing in her scent - that cloying sweetness - and the next moment, he reached his hand out to her again, grabbing her waist and drawing her to him. His voice was suddenly soft and remorseful.   
  
“I’m sorry, Narcissa,” he said gently. “I was angry, but I forgive you. What’s done is done, and it cannot be helped now.”   
  
Narcissa didn’t struggle. She looked up at him and, making sure the light caught her perfect face, she smiled. “Kiss me,” she said.   
  
Caught off guard, Malfoy stared at her, but it was obvious that he was in no position to protest. He kissed her fiercely, greedily, trailing his biting lips across her cheek, her forehead, her nose.    
  
Narcissa moaned softly and tilted her head back, exposing her neck. Malfoy pressed a trail of kisses from her chin to the collar of her shirt - the pressure of it was almost enough to collapse her wind-pipe. Narcissa gave a strangled little gasp.   
  
Then, very suddenly, he stopped. He pulled away and looked at her impassively for a few moments, and then he collapsed at her feet.     
  
Narcissa staggered with relief. She put a hand up to still the throbbing in her temple, and then knelt down beside Malfoy and felt the pulse in his neck. It was weak, faltering. He would probably only last a few minutes. Hemlock was extremely poisonous, after all.     
  
She sighed. This was not the first time her perfume had got her out of a tight spot, but it usually did so without killing people.   
  
Still, she’d done what she had to do. She’d done what her clever female ancestors would have done. Now the only difficulty was getting out of here. If magic really didn’t work down here, then she would have to think like a muggle, and she was just wondering if perhaps she would rather die, when the sound of voices reached her.    
  
  
“But how did Malfoy even get into the castle?” Lily asked, as she and Severus made their way tentatively down the dungeon corridor, in the direction of Narcissa’s scream.   
  
Snape paused. “Well, you know that map of Potter’s?”   
  
Lily shook her head in disbelief. Her cheeks were still glowing, but she was fighting back against the Rosura potion. She had folded her arms so that they wouldn’t be tempted to stray in Severus’ direction, and he was over-brimming with admiration and disappointment in equal measure. His consciousness of her strength, and the dangerous situation they were walking into, was making the warm oblivion of her body seem even more appealing.    
  
“I don’t believe even Potter would be so stupid as to leave that thing lying around!” she exclaimed.   
  
Snape didn’t say anything. When Lily insulted Potter, that writhing creature deep in his chest was suddenly pacified. The idea of telling her the truth about how Malfoy had got into the castle had never been less appealing.   
  
“I’m going to kill him,” she breathed furiously. “He might not mind about Narcissa being killed - and I’m still not sure that I should mind either - but think of all the points he’s going to lose for Gryffindor when Dumbledore finds out!”   
  
“Yeah…” Snape was tempted to join in with this abuse and, had Lily been more lucid, she would have wondered why he didn’t. But he didn’t like lying to her. It made him feel like he’d called her ‘mudblood’ again - it made him feel dirty and tainted, as nothing else had ever done. Frightening first years, lashing out at Pettigrew or some other hopeless idiot, getting his own back on Potter - all these had never troubled Snape’s conscience a bit, but hurting Lily was unendurable.    
  
He had never wanted to lie to her. It was just that, he being who he was, and she being who she was, it was sometimes necessary. He wished it wasn’t. But lying to her was less painful than disgusting her, or disappointing her, or living without her, so he let it go.   
  
“His dad knew these dungeons better than anyone,” Snape said, trying to change the subject. “Malfoy’s always boasting that his dad had secret rooms for imprisoning students.”   
  
Lily screwed up her face in distaste. “I always wondered why Malfoy was so screwed-up.”   
  
“Oh, that’s not why,” Snape said, uncomfortably aware that he was edging into a subject that would require him to lie to her again. “He’s taken Amortentia.”   
  
Snape had to give her credit for the way she absorbed this information. Lily was a very feeling, impetuous woman, but she knew when calmness and clear-thinking were called for.   
  
“Well, then, we’ better be prepared for anything,” she said, and walked on, holding her lit wand in front of her.   
  
They came to another of the many splintery wooden doors that branched off the dungeon corridor. This one was like all the others, except that it had a rusty iron bolt on the outside. It was clearly used for locking people in, not out. Lily and Snape looked at each other.   
  
“No,” she said. “Dumbledore would have noticed…”   
  
“I think,” Snape murmured, running his hands over the rusty bolt, “that it’s bewitched to be visible only to troublesome students.”  
  
“How come I can see it then?” Lily asked.   
  
Snape couldn’t help smiling at her. “Oh, because it wasn’t you who blew up Potter’s cauldron in Potions last year? Somebody put you under the Imperius Curse? You were possessed, right?”   
  
Lily gave him a grudging smile back. “As it happens, yes,” she said sweetly. “I was possessed by the spirit of justice.”   
  
Snape grinned. It was one of his favourite memories - but, as with all his favourite memories, it was tinged with bitterness. Potter and Black had been taunting him every time Slughorn turned his back, calling him gutless and pathetic; Snape had been painfully aware of Lily’s eyes on them, and he’d got up to curse Potter - because he wouldn’t, he _wouldn’t_ be humiliated in front of Lily, he’d rather be expelled - when he had felt a slight pressure on his shoulder, and a murmur as she brushed past him. “Give me ten seconds,” she’d said.  
  
Then she had walked past Potter, smiling sweetly at him and, while he was grinning stupidly back (because he had a tendency to do this around Lily), she’d emptied a bottle of Knarl quills into his potion.   
  
Lily just had enough time to saunter serenely back to her seat, before the cauldron exploded, showering the class with drops of Shrinking Solution. There were yells, as people’s hair started to shrink back into their scalp, or their noses dwindled to the size of tadpoles.    
  
“How do you bewitch something so that only troublesome students can see it?” Lily asked, peering at the bolt with keen interest.   
  
“It’s called a Contrition Charm,” Severus told her. “It means something’s there but only people with a guilty conscience can see it. Designed to make criminals confess to their crimes - you know, because they think they’re going crazy. Apparently, Herpo the Foul used to wear a necklace of severed heads strung around his neck, but the decaying flesh would only smell bad to people who had betrayed him. That’s how he knew who his loyal followers were. Anyone who could manage to breathe the air around him was trustworthy. That’s why wizards have the proverb ‘smells like trouble’.”   
  
Lily was gazing at him in horrified fascination. The glow of desire had not left her cheeks - but there was something else underneath it, almost like fear. “You really know a lot about this, don’t you?”   
  
Snape shrugged. “I get bored with moronic lessons on Cheering Charms,” he muttered defensively.    
  
“It’s a shame. You could have used one.”  
  
Snape pulled the bolt back, perhaps a little harder than he would ordinarily have done. “It’s not real,” he said petulantly. “It doesn’t last.”   
  
“What doesn’t?” Lily asked, stepping through the doorway, with her lit wand held ready in front of her.   
  
“Cheering Charms. They’re not really making you happy. They’re just preventing you from remembering why you’re depressed.”   
  
“Maybe that depression is preventing you from remembering why you’re happy,” she answered cheerfully. "It's not a delusion if you're already deluded - or anyway, not necessarily."    
  
Snape smiled, but said nothing. After a few steps, Lily held out her hand to him, without looking at him, and he took it.    
  
She was breathing very heavily, and squeezed his hand so tightly it was almost painful. Had she been a different woman, Snape would have thought that she was afraid. But he knew she was fighting the effects of the Rosura, struggling to remain rational while desire whispered to her, screamed at her, nipped and pinched at her flesh. He didn’t want to say it again - because it was going to be unbearable to remember having said it even once when she was back to normal again, when she remembered how he felt about her, and she turned those pained, pitying eyes on him, but she was amazing.   
  
The corridor opened out into a room that felt, by the coldness of the air and the quality of the echoes, like a cathedral. Their wand-light could penetrate only a little way into the darkness and, without thinking, Severus put his hand out to stop Lily going forward. He had the feeling they were on the edge of an abyss.       
  
It reminded him of one Christmas when he’d slept over at her house. They’d dragged sleeping bags into the living room and had lain down, propped up on their elbows, talking about spell-books, alchemy and unicorns, until Lily’s head drooped, and Snape, though wide awake and aching for her attention, let her sleep. He’d watched her for some time - her breathing soft and shallow, her lips slightly parted. The only source of light in the room had been the coloured lights draped over the Christmas tree - glittering green, yellow, orange and pink - fake, garish things, he had always thought them, but they were pretty now.    
  
Severus had always hated Christmas-time in the muggle world, because the season seemed to plunge his mother deeper into misery. She couldn’t stop herself from talking about Christmas in the wizarding world - the trees decorated with real fairies, the crackers that contained live mice and Rear Admiral’s hats.   
  
Snape had listened, spell-bound but anxious. He was always thirsty for more details of the magical world - the world he belonged to, the place where he’d be accepted, the place where he wouldn’t have to suffer the teasing of barely-sentient, screeching little muggle children - but he had always listened out for his father’s tread on the carpet outside the living room, ready to hush his mother at the first sounds of his approach. Talk of the magical world made Tobias angry, but then, Eileen Snape liked to make him angry. She didn’t care that it would cost her a good hiding; she didn’t even seem to care that it made her son cry; she just wanted to provoke Tobias, to rob him of his peace as he had robbed her of hers.    
  
At any rate, watching Lily’s sleeping form in the glow of the muggle fairy-lights had reconciled Severus to muggle Christmases. He’d felt, at that moment, like his soul was on fire - it was comfortable but painful, halfway between longing and contentment - a fulfilling thirst, an aching satisfaction. And he gloried in it, as he would have gloried in anything he had to endure for her sake.   
  
But then, rolling onto his back, and looking out of the still-open curtains, he’d seen a green light in the sky. For one heart-stopping moment, he thought it was the Dark Mark - but it was only an aeroplane, its green and red lights flickering as it soared over Manchester’s red-brick houses and smoking industrial chimneys. And Snape had realized that, outside of their little puddle of light was a hungry, beckoning darkness, where people were cold and intolerant, and would try to take his precious friend away from him.    
  
There’s nothing like the fear that grips you when you realize that, outside your charmed circle, there are cold, blue, grasping fingers waiting to drag you away from your beloved. And she doesn’t see them. Her blissful ignorance makes you all the more afraid. It was this fear, more than anything, that had prompted Snape to do the reckless, increasingly desperate, increasingly meaningless, things he’d done to secure her. It was fear of the darkness that drove him out into it.   
  
They stood looking at each other on the edge of the abyss. Snape didn't know why, but he thought he could hear it calling to him. And then suddenly, their wands flickered out.


	26. Rosura, Part Five

For a moment, all Severus could hear was Lily’s rapid breathing in the darkness. He was seized with a sudden terror that she’d wander off the ledge, and he tried to reach out to her, but the rubble littering the cavern floor slipped under his feet and he stumbled. He reached out to steady himself against the wall, and felt a thick, sticky substance coating it. It was as though the walls were bleeding.   
  
Then Lily’s voice came out of the darkness: “Try doing some magic,” she said.   
  
Severus tried. It was a terrifying sensation, to feel the magic flowing down your arms, tingling in your finger-tips, but without anything happening. Beside him, Lily gave a frightened little gasp, and it tore through Severus like a chain-saw. He reached out to her again, and found her this time, clasping her warm little body fast in his arms.    
  
“It’s alright,” he whispered. “It’s some kind of spell that Abraxas Malfoy must’ve put on the place. Something like the enchantments that make it impossible to Apparate or Disapparate inside Hogwarts, probably. It’s not for good.”  
  
Lily had leaned her head against his chest, but he pulled her chin upwards again, trying to look into her eyes. He hated the idea that she might hear his racing heartbeat and know he was afraid.   
  
“It’s just this room,” he said, exerting every fibre of his being to keep his voice steady. “Go back into the corridor and see if you can use magic.”   
  
Lily did so. He went with her a little way, steadying her as she stepped across the loose stones (and whatever it was that was making that crunching sound), until she pulled away from him, and he heard her footsteps receding up the corridor that led back to the dungeons. For a few minutes, it was as though she had dropped out of the world altogether - no gingerbread scent, no warm touch, no low, calm, serious voice telling him that he was being unkind or unfair or just plain morbid. Snape felt a nagging sense of grief - at the moment, it was like a fly buzzing around him, trying to get his attention, but, as soon as it landed, it was going to sting like a scorpion.   
  
There were bound to be other booby-traps set by Abraxas Malfoy. And, without magic, how could she defend herself? He should never have let her go on her own. Even if there were no booby-traps, there was still the potion-crazed Lucius, roaming about the place, and he was worse than a dozen Dark Curses, especially to a ‘mudblood’ who stood between him and Narcissa.    
  
Suddenly, the dungeon exploded with colour. Severus had to shut his eyes. When he opened them again, there was the reassuring, if slightly blurred, figure of Lily, holding two flaming torches. She must have summoned them from their brackets in the dungeon corridor, because she hadn’t had time to go all the way back.    
  
“Magic works about ten feet down the corridor,” she said. “And it takes a while to fade - that’s why our wands went out about thirty seconds after we came in here. But I thought I should get us some light, so we can look for the porcelain bitch without magic.”   
  
Snape grinned at her. “I like the way you think,” he said. “Especially the bit about the porcelain bitch.”   
  
Lily had been staring at him rather dreamily, but when he said this, she bit her lip and looked away. The Rosura potion was still glowing within her, and she was so adorable under its influence, that Severus wondered if he could punctuate the years of misery that were sure to follow by poisoning her a few more times in his life. If he got to see her - and see her like this - all warm-hearted and clumsy - say, once a decade, he could probably survive a life without her.           
  
When he could tear his eyes away, he saw that the torches were illuminating a ledge in front of them: Severus realized with a jolt that they had been standing right at the edge of it. He gripped Lily’s arm and pulled her back, being careful to touch her as little as possible, because he didn’t want her to suffer any more than she already had under the influence of this potion. They could see the edge of an island of stone in the middle of the abyss, but it was two far away to make out what was on it.   
  
Severus decided that they couldn’t risk shouting for Narcissa: it might give away her location to Malfoy, who was sure to be skulking around here somewhere. Now that he had Lily by his side, he couldn’t imagine what he’d been thinking, letting a dangerous man like that into the castle. Narcissa’s sneers and insults seemed miles away. Still, Lily would not be by his side for much longer, and he’d have to brace himself for her pity when the potion wore off. He didn’t want to think about it right now.   
  
He walked slowly around the ledge, being careful to avoid the bones that he could now see scattered amidst the pebbles on the floor. They were standing in a kind of miniature graveyard. Some of the bones looked like animal skeletons - and he wondered what had lived down here that could have killed the creatures - but, set in little alcoves in the cavern walls, were dozens of skulls - clearly human, though some of them looked slightly misshapen, as though they had belonged to trolls or centaurs or goblins. Each one had its own little shelf carved into the rock, and each was starkly illuminated by the dancing firelight. Snape had the fleeting impression of being in hell, but then he reminded himself that wizards didn’t believe in hell. He was always giving voice to muggle superstitions or phrases like this, and they always got him mercilessly teased in the Slytherin common-room. No matter how much he tried to distance himself from the muggle world, it still shaped his thoughts in ways he deeply resented.   
  
Could Abraxas Malfoy have killed people down here? Until this moment, Snape had always assumed he was just a deranged teacher, driven mad by disobedient and irredeemably stupid school-children. He had never suspected the man of being a Dark Wizard.  
  
Lily was also looking at the skulls. Her mouth was twisted with disgust.   
  
“Maybe he just collected them,” Snape suggested. “Lots of wizards have skull collections - Avery’s dad drinks mulled mead out of them. He’s always saying that they belonged to his enemies - but I know for a fact he bought them from the Carrion Pigeons in Knockturn Alley.”   
  
“Carrion pigeons?”   
  
Snape was uncomfortably aware that he was telling her things that would confirm her doubts about him, but the charm of having Lily listen to him, of telling her things she didn’t already know (which hardly ever happened), was too strong to break. “They’re sort of grave-robbers,” he explained. “Goblins, mostly. They sell human flesh for use in potions.”   
  
“What kind of potions?” she asked, and despite the Rosura, there was a definite edge to her voice now. He’d have to be careful.    
  
“Just potions,” he said evasively. “You know, a lot of Healing magic requires human ingredients.”  
  
“That’s stuff like hair and nails and blood - stuff you can take from a person without killing them.”    
  
“But, if they’re already dead,” Snape persisted doggedly, “what’s the harm?”   
  
“The harm is in creating demand for that kind of thing,” she said warmly. “Healing magic used to use dead flesh, but too many people were killing muggles just to supply the healers with it. So, it was outlawed. Anyway, that kind of magic always does more harm than good. If you have to hurt someone in order to brew a potion, or cast a spell, the remnants of that hurt are always visible in the effects of the magic; the patient might recover, but at a price.”  
  
Snape smiled uneasily. He loved talking to Lily about magical theory - he even loved arguing with her about magical ethics - but, tonight, it was making him tense. (And he was already pretty tense from refusing her advances). He was beginning to realize that he couldn’t be the type of wizard Lily wanted him to be. Nobody could, unless they had the whole wizard world at their mercy. Potter might be able to get away with letting his enemies live, and only using magic that was wholesome, because Potter had piles of Galleons and magical friends - Potter had teachers and students alike fawning on him - Potter had never had to struggle.     
  
“There’s something I don’t get,” Lily murmured, interrupting his resentful reverie. “There’s an island in the middle of this pit, right? Presumably, that’s where Malfoy Senior put the disobedient children. They couldn’t get out, because they couldn’t use magic - although, I don’t know how he got them there in the first place - maybe he was immune to the dampening effects of this room, if he created it. But, if the children were trapped on that island, why did he need the bolt on the door leading into this room? What was he locking in that could get up to that door in the first place?”   
  
Snape froze. “You mean there’s something else in here?”   
  
“Possibly,” Lily said, shrugging. “Abraxas Malfoy doesn’t strike me as the kind of wizard who ever did anything by halves.”   
  
Severus listened. He could hear nothing but the rush of water far below. He supposed it was an underground river that fed into the lake in the grounds.   
  
“Do you think Narcissa’s on that island?” Lily asked, pointing her torch in the direction of the plateau in the middle of the crevasse. The light couldn’t penetrate that far: Severus could only see the outer edges of the plateau - but there was something hanging limply off it - like a fold of fabric, swaying in the stillness. He wondered briefly how he would feel if he discovered Narcissa was dead.   
  
“We’d better find a way across,” he said eventually, “if there is one.”   
  
“Of course there is one,” Lily said brightly. “Abraxas Malfoy was a teacher. Teachers don’t set traps, they set challenges.”  
  
Snape smiled at her. She was so dauntlessly optimistic. “He was also a Malfoy,” he pointed out. “And Malfoys don’t respect intelligence; they respect Malfoys. You know there’s a Black Family dungeon down here somewhere too? The door only opens if you smear it with the blood of a member of the House of Black. If Abraxas Malfoy set up any defences like that, we’re in trouble.”   
  
“Look for a secret lever or something,” Lily said, picking up some of the skulls from their little alcoves and examining them. “There has to be a non-magical way over to that island.”   
  
Snape did as she asked, casting the torchlight over the slimy walls and the animal skeletons, half-buried in soot.   
  
“You could get into the Black Family dungeon,” Lily murmured absent-mindedly, “because you’re related to the Blacks, aren’t you? Didn’t that ancestor of yours, Moribund Prince, marry Narcissa’s grandmother?”   
  
“Claudia Black,” Snape said sullenly. “Yeah, but I’m not descended from her children. Everybody married Moribund Prince.”   
  
“How come?”   
  
Grudgingly, Snape elaborated. Talk of his ancestors always made him gloomy, for some reason. “He fell into a magical coma at the age of twenty-one, and never woke up,” he murmured. “Obviously, a wizard with a noble ancestry, who couldn’t talk back, was every pure-blood witch’s dream, because he had fourteen wives and twenty-seven children before he died.” He poked at a mouse-skeleton with his shoe, and added: “Evidently, he was in no position to protest.”   
  
Lily frowned dubiously. “How did he have twenty-seven children if he was in a coma?”   
  
Snape shrugged. “I never found a book that was prepared to go into details.”   
  
Lily laughed, blushing - well, he supposed she was blushing - under the coral-pink glow of the Rosura it was difficult to be sure. “I suppose there are charms that could have been effective,” she mumbled. “Engorgement, or…”   
  
Snape was laughing himself now. He couldn‘t believe he was laughing, after everything that had happened tonight. “I always kind of assumed,” he said, when he could straighten his face, “that his wives took lovers and just pretended their children were Moribund Prince’s. Because it would get pretty boring, being married to a man in a coma.”   
  
“It wouldn’t be so bad,” Lily said thoughtfully, checking the doorway to the corridor for secret passageways or hidden switches, “I could read him Shakespeare, and he wouldn’t be able to stop me.”   
  
“I think even a magical coma wouldn’t be that strong,” Snape told her. “You’d bore him awake.”  
  
Lily made a face. “It’s a shame you can’t get into the Black Family dungeon,” she said thoughtfully. “I would’ve liked to have seen it.”   
  
“Not your kind of thing,” Snape said, “trust me.” And then, because he couldn’t resist it, he added, “but, if you really want to see it, we could use Bella’s blood to get in.”  
  
Lily smiled at him. There were no reproaches this time. If Lily disliked Narcissa, it was nothing to how she felt about Bellatrix. But the smile froze on her lips, and suddenly she was backing away, towards the edge of the abyss, because there was something coming out of the tunnel through which they’d just entered, something that was flailing madly and filling the darkness with shrieks. The echoes in the cavern intensified and distorted the sound until it was unendurable, until it sounded like human voices begging for mercy, and the mad, muggle notion that they were in hell crept up on Snape again, though he was too afraid for Lily to pay much attention to it.   
  
He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her away from the ledge, onto the thin path that ran around the edge of the abyss.  
  
As she moved, he was able to see the creature, in the rust-coloured glow of the torches. What had at first appeared to be a writhing mass of feathers and claws separated out into strange, powerful limbs and glowering, amber eyes. The creature was immense - but, perhaps through long years living in these tunnels, it had developed a kind of crouching gait. It had the head, wings and claws of a giant eagle, and the hind-quarters of a lion. Its feathers were matted with filth, and its wings were folded at an unnatural angle, as though they had been broken at some point in the past, and had healed in a very confined space.    
  
The creature seemed to be maddened by the firelight, but the idea of putting the torches out and being in the dark with that thing was extremely unappealing to Snape.   
  
“It’s a Griffin,” Lily whispered.   
  
Snape’s heart was racing, and his brain had ground to a halt. The Griffin was standing in front of the only way out, and it was being incensed by the firelight that they needed to escape it. Still, he wouldn’t show his fear in front of Lily. “It’s alright,” he said again, meaning it even less this time. “We’ll… we’ll find another way out. Follow me around the ledge, slowly. Don’t turn your back on it.”  
  
Lily let him steer her away from the creature, around the edge of the abyss. Snape’s eyes were drawn to the Griffin’s sharp beak and claws, both of which had congealed blood smeared around them.    
  
“It’s not fresh,” Lily said, as though reading his mind. “It’s not Narcissa’s.”   
  
“I don’t care about Narcissa,” he said abruptly. “Narcissa can rot down here for all I care. We’re getting out. Stay behind me.”            
  
“Severus!” she said suddenly, making him jump, “it could fly us to the island!”   
  
Snape was sufficiently exasperated by this comment to take his eyes off the Griffin for a moment and stare at her. “How exactly?” he asked. “You tame Griffins with Confundus Charms, or by slipping a Docility Draught into their food. We can’t use either of those things.”   
  
“We’ll just have to tame it like a muggle would.”   
  
“A muggle _wouldn’t_ ,” Snape pointed out. “A muggle would run a mile at the sight of it.”    
  
But Lily wouldn’t be deterred. She was looking around at the sparse dungeons, as though searching for inspiration. “What have we got?” she muttered. “Fire, skulls and pebbles…”  
  
“Lily,” Severus said anxiously. “We’ve got to get out of here. Forget about Narcissa. She could be anywhere - she could’ve been chased off the ledge by that thing, for all we know.”  
  
But he was slowly and painfully becoming aware that, if Lily wanted to stay and fight the thing, there was nothing he could do but rack his brains along with her. He couldn’t leave her, and still less could he let her think he was a coward.   
  
“Alright,” he said, his voice slightly strained. “Let’s think about this logically. If Malfoy Senior used this creature to fly across the chasm, he must have had something - ,”   
  
Severus stopped. He was suddenly struck by an idea. Griffins had been bred by wizards to guard treasure - so they must have been bred to detect guilt. It was the same principle as the Contrition Charm - everything in this room, maybe even the magical dampening field, was reacting to their disobedience. The Griffin was not incensed by the firelight, but by their intention of robbing the room of its treasure - of Narcissa.   
  
“Lily,” he said, talking quickly, because the Griffin was advancing on them, and they were running out of ledge, “we’ve got to make it think we’re not here for Narcissa.”   
  
“Why else would we be here?” she breathed desperately.   
  
Severus felt as though his brain had given up - it had been through too much tonight - fending off the kisses of the only woman he’d ever loved, working against all its instincts to try and save the life of a woman he despised, being robbed of its ability to do magic - he had been through sexual and magical frustration, and now terror was winding its way into his veins, and he had nothing left. The hourglass was empty. His time was up.   
  
He stopped backing away and Lily, magnetised to his side by the Rosura potion, stopped with him. There was an unbearable amount of trust in her eyes.   
  
“Kiss me,” he said.  
  
Even in their current perilous situation, Lily was unable to resist. She pressed her lips to his and, once again, Snape was gripped by that delicious oblivion. He felt as though he had dropped off the ledge into the darkness, and was sinking, with his beloved, into the dark, foamy waters of the river far below. It was like the river Lethe, obliterating all his memories, easing all his bitterness, kissing away Spinner’s End and Hogwarts and Platform Nine and Three Quarters - everything that had shaped him into the uneasy, bitter, resentful creature he’d been until a few moments ago. All the hatred that had been binding the molecules of his body together disappeared, and he melted into his Lily.  
  
After a few minutes (or an eternity - Severus had no idea which), Lily pulled away from him, breathless and glowing, and glanced absent-mindedly at the Griffin. She seemed surprised to discover that it was still there.  It had skulked away into the shadows, and was gnawing at its blood-clotted claws with its sharp beak.    
  
Lily grinned at him. She looked deeply impressed. “How did you know that would get rid of it?” she asked.    
  
Snape sighed, torn between contentment and exasperation. This was all he’d ever wanted - to impress her, to save her - but, when she woke up in the morning, it was going to be overshadowed by that unbearable pity he was dreading so much. He was not going to be her hero then, just a pathetic little thing that she had led on without realizing it. It was worse to think that she would reproach herself, as well as pitying him.     
  
Still, there was work to be done. He would have years to dwell on the experience of her pity. Right now, the porcelain bitch needed saving.   
  
“When we go near the Griffin, you have to keep thinking about me,” he said.   
  
“I can do that,” she breathed, almost laughing.  
  
“It won’t attack us as long as we don’t feel guilty,” Snape added, ignoring the urge to throw his arms around her.      
  
“It looks like it will only support one person’s weight, though,” she said, regarding the monster critically. “I’ll go across first.”   
  
Snape shook his head. “There’s no way,” he said emphatically.   
  
“Look,” Lily said, folding her arms, “I may have gone all girly with this stupid, pink potion, but I’m still me. Narcissa might need healing magic. You don’t know as much about that as I do.”  
  
Snape sighed. He supposed it would be easier for Lily to keep her mind off Narcisssa, anyway, since she was under the influence of a potion that made her obsessed with men. At any rate, he was pretty sure that he could use magic in this room now, as long as he thought about his Lily and banished guilt from his thoughts, so he would be able to steady her on the Griffin’s back with a Balancing Charm.   
  
“Alright,” he said grudgingly. “Send Narcissa over, and I’ll send the Griffin back to get you. If you see Malfoy, don’t give him any chances, OK? Don’t even let him open his mouth. Just stun him. He knows how to use magic in this place, and he’s crazy.”   
  
“I don’t need any extra incentive to stun Malfoy,” Lily muttered.    
  
She went up to the Griffin, looking straight into its glowing amber eyes, and then bowed, with much more confidence than the situation warranted, as far as Severus was concerned. The Griffin, after regarding her haughtily for a few seconds, inclined its head. This was as close to a bow as Lily was going to get, and she seemed to realize it, because she stretched out a hand to the Griffin’s beak, and gave it a tentative pat.    
  
She got on the creature’s back, gripping its feathers with one hand and holding her flaming torch aloft with the other. Snape muttered the balancing charm, but still his heart hammered as the Griffin leapt off the edge of the platform - they dropped for what seemed like forever, and then the creature unfurled its massive, lop-sided wings and beat the air, gaining height. The darkness melted away from Lily’s torch, revealing two figures on the rocky platform in the centre of the chasm, one prostrate on the floor, with his ice-blonde hair pooled about him like a halo, and one kneeling beside the figure, her hands placed elegantly in her lap, watching the approaching light with haughty expectation.  
  
Snape realized with a start that Narcissa might have been watching them as they kissed. They had been holding flaming torches, after all, and the Griffin had been making enough noise to get her attention.      
  
Words were exchanged - Severus couldn’t make them out. Lily knelt beside the figure of Malfoy, sweeping her hair back into a ponytail with a wave of her wand. She fumbled in the pockets of her robes and produced something, which she proceeded to poke into Malfoy’s mouth, none too gently. Then he saw her turn her wand on Narcissa.   
  
“Get on the Griffin,” came Lily’s disdainful voice through the intervening space. “Do you think you can manage that, princess?”  
  
Narcissa was clearly not brave enough to retort. Snape saw her go up to the creature - it squawked and snapped at her with its beak, but Lily, whose eyes were still on Malfoy, muttered: “You’re supposed to bow. If you looked up from your mirror in class every once in a while, you might know that.”    
  
Stiffly, Narcissa bowed, and, after a dubious pause, the creature bowed back. Snape knew that Lily would not be casting a Balancing Charm to steady her, so he did it himself, ensuring that she stayed on the Griffin’s back until it landed next to him, and she slid off, backing immediately against the wall, with her nose wrinkled, as though she couldn’t be far enough away from the creature with the matted feathers and the blood-smeared claws.  
  
When she noticed Severus, she gave him a curious look. It was knowing, almost triumphant. Severus supposed she knew now how he felt about Lily - she was probably planning to blackmail him, or just plain humiliate him by letting everyone know.   
  
Well, it didn’t matter, he thought despondently. Anyone could know, now that Lily did. Getting teased for liking a mudblood, even being hunted by the Death Eaters for allowing one of their own to get killed - because Lucius was still lying motionless on the floor of the plateau - seemed like a picnic compared to experiencing Lily’s awkward, wide-eyed pity.     
  
He stared back at Narcissa defiantly. His hope was lying in ruins around his feet. Everything had gone wrong. And his plan to teach this hateful bitch a lesson had only given her more ammunition against him.  
  
Still, he would never forget Lily’s tender, blossom-coloured cheeks and her surreptitious smile. It was a painful treasure, an exquisite ache; it was like a knife plunged up to the hilt in his heart: it was agony, but he couldn’t take it out, or he would die.      
  
“Stay here,” he growled at Narcissa, and then approached the Griffin, keeping his mind on Lily, and bowed. Waiting only for the creature to start inclining its head, he leapt on its back, and dropped through the air, towards Lily and the island.


	27. Rosura, Part Six

“He’s been poisoned,” Lily breathed, when Severus landed on the plateau beside her, and swung off the Griffin’s back to examine Malfoy. “Narcissa says it was Hemlock, though how she gave it to him, I have no idea. I’ve used a Bezoar. He should be alright in a few minutes.”   
  
Snape was impressed. “You carry a Bezoar with you at all times?” he asked incredulously.   
  
“Of course. I’m a Healer.”  
  
Severus didn’t respond. He was tempted to remind her that she was not a Healer yet, but she had been through too much tonight to be teased, and so, much as he loved to argue with her, he restrained himself. They conjured ropes to tie Malfoy onto the Griffin’s back, and then gave the creature as sharp a nudge as they dared, and watched it wheel across the cavern to the ledge on which Narcissa stood.    
  
“Can we trust Narcissa to send the Griffin back?” Lily murmured.   
  
“She wants to get it as far from her as possible,” Snape replied. “You can’t trust Narcissa, but you can always trust Narcissa to be Narcissa.”   
  
When they were all off the island, and grouped around Malfoy’s prostrate form on the ledge, the Griffin, as though sensing that it was no longer needed, gave a parting squawk and skulked off into the tunnels again.   
  
Malfoy stirred, and opened his dark blue eyes. “Severus,” he growled; his voice was ragged from the shouting, and his face was pale and coated in a sickly sheen of sweat. “Where’s Narcissa?”   
  
“I’m here,” she said, unexpectedly. Snape looked up at her. Silvery threads were hanging down in front of her face, having escaped the neat little knot she always used to tie her hair back; her face was smeared with soot and dirt, yet she was looking down at Malfoy with an expression of languid concern. “I’m not hurt,” she continued. “But you will keep your hands off me, Mr Malfoy, and if I ever catch them upon me again, I will have them cut off.”    
  
“Severus, what is this mud blood doing with you?” he asked slowly, focussing his dim eyes on Lily.   
  
“Saving your life, you disgusting little creep,” Lily replied coldly.   
  
Severus caught her by the arm to restrain her, and he could tell, from the little gasp and the surreptitious smile she directed at him, that the contact had electrified her. Still, she wouldn’t show it in front of Malfoy and Narcissa.   
  
Malfoy was getting up, steadying himself against the cavern wall. The three others withdrew from him slightly. Narcissa, with spectacular hypocrisy, hid herself behind Lily.   
  
Lily was the first to speak. “You’re going to come with us to the Headmaster’s Office,” she said calmly, pointing her wand at him. “And you can explain to him what it is you’re doing here. We’re not interested.”   
  
Malfoy’s eyes found Snape’s, and he stepped towards him slightly. “Severus,” he mumbled, his voice imploring.   
  
Snape just shook his head. He had told Malfoy that he was on his own if he got caught.  
  
Malfoy recovered, and turned disdainfully towards Lily. “Little girl,” he said, “your word against mine is worth about as much as your second-hand school robes.”   
  
Lily smiled. “ _My_ word?” she asked innocently. “All _I_ can accuse you of is being inside the castle, dying of Hemlock poisoning. It’s the little princess you have to worry about, Malfoy. And I bet her word is worth a lot more in your snooty little circles than mine. Isn’t her father Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot or something?” She prodded him in the chest with her wand. Malfoy winced. “Now get moving,” she said.   
  
They moved down the stone corridor in silence, Narcissa staying close to Malfoy. She was walking behind him, watching him guardedly. He didn’t seem to be able to keep his eyes off her and, once or twice, when she slipped on the jagged rubble and bones that littered the floor of the passage, he reached out to steady her.  
  
Lily and Severus were exchanging glances too. Severus was trying to make the most of them, because she would be gone soon, and all he’d have would be this memory.   
  
And, while they were occupied like this, Narcissa slipped her wand into Malfoy’s hand, without speaking. A crooked smile was twisting her thin lips. There was an animation, an excitement in her face that Malfoy had never seen there before. It was very reminiscent of a look her sister had given him not so long ago.   
  
But then he whipped round to face Lily and Severus, and slashed his wand through the air, muttering an incantation that was garbled and distorted by the echoes in the tunnel, and by Snape’s sudden shouts. Lily fell backwards, clutching her face, and hit her head against the cavern wall with a horrible crack.      
  
Snape recovered his wits sufficiently to cast a shield charm around them, and then dropped to his knees next to his only friend, who was staring blankly ahead of her, resting her head against the damp rock of the cavern wall.   
  
Severus gripped her by the shoulders. “Little girl,” he said, his voice pleading. The coral-pink of the Rosura potion was gone from her cheeks now, leaving her white and staring. “What’s wrong?”   
  
He shook her slightly, torn between tenderness and frustration. Half of him wanted to whisper, and half wanted to shout. “Lily, tell me where you’re hurt,” he said, forcing himself to sound calm. “Please.”  
  
She just stared at him. For the second time that night, a cold shudder of realization prickled through Severus. “You have no idea who I am, do you?” he murmured.  
  
Lily’s blank stare was his only answer.   
  
Snape clenched his teeth and turned to Malfoy, who had lowered his wand, and was looking at Severus smugly, as though expecting congratulations.   
  
“I’ll have to run for it, Severus,” he muttered, when no congratulations were forthcoming. “I’ll take Narcissa - I won’t hurt her, I’ll just…”   
  
He stopped, because Snape had raised his wand. His hands were shaking.   
  
“What are you - ?”   
  
“Crucio,” Severus growled.   
  
The cavern was suddenly full of screams, bouncing off the walls, making the skulls quake on their ledges. It was louder than the Griffin’s mad squawks, because Narcissa was screaming too, but what she was saying, Snape had no idea, because he was feeding off Malfoy’s anguish. It was wonderful. He was in complete control of someone. He was making someone suffer the way he had been made to suffer - and right at that moment, he had no idea who was writhing on the floor beneath his wand - all the people who had ever hurt him blurred into one another - and the screaming figure was Potter, his father, Petunia Evans, and every screeching, taunting student who’d ever laughed at him.         
  
But then a different voice was rending the air, a voice that found its way through the haze of anger, and prodded him deep in his writhing guts.   
  
“Stop it!” Lily was yelling. “You’ll kill him!”   
  
“Oh, you’re on his side now?” Snape shouted. Still, Malfoy was howling beneath his wand. “You don’t even know who he is!”  
  
“I know he’s the one on the floor being tortured!” she snapped. “Let him go!”  
  
Snape glanced at her, and saw the horror in her eyes. It was like a punch in the stomach. He flicked his wand, and lifted the curse off Lucius. He let Lily go to him, check his pulse, examine his pupils, and all the time, he skulked beside the rough cavern wall, brooding over the horrified look she’d given him.


	28. Rosura, Part Seven

Lily sat up in bed in the Hospital Wing, taking in her surroundings with bright-eyed interest. Agitated voices were proceeding from the office at the end of the room. She was sure that nice man with the white beard and the crooked nose, who’d said his name was Dumbledore, had left the door open on purpose, so that she would be able to hear his conversation. A strange name, Dumbledore - and yet it seemed right, it sounded familiar, it seemed to fit his face.   
  
“Her parents are here,” the white-bearded Headmaster was saying. “They would like to take her home. And possibly for good.”   
  
“Back to the muggle world?” came Madam Pomfrey‘s shrill, horrified voice. “Absolutely not, Dumbledore!”   
  
“Poppy, they are her parents,” he said gently. “There’s nothing I can do.”   
  
“But she’ll be of age in a few weeks. Then she’ll be able to decide for herself what she wants to do.”  
  
“Unfortunately, she is only of age in the wizard world. In the muggle world, she will not come of age for another year. We must respect their laws, Poppy.”   
  
“Their laws don’t apply to her! She’s a witch!”   
  
“Only if she wants to be. I agree that the Lily we both know wants to be a witch. But whether she is still that Lily remains to be ascertained. Memory charms can alter people profoundly.”   
  
There was a sound from Madam Pomfrey’s direction - almost a sob, and Dumbledore’s voice paused. Lily had the impression that he was putting his arm round her.    
  
“Her parents have agreed to let me take her home tomorrow,” he resumed, still in that gentle voice. “We have only one night to try and repair some of the damage that Lucius has done to her, and enable her to make her own choice. I must visit the library, but I will return soon, and then we will endeavour, with great care, to restore her memories. It can be done, Poppy.”  
  
Lily pretended to be asleep as Dumbledore crossed the room. She felt his gaze on her - and was sure, though she had no idea how she was sure, that it was full of distracted amusement. Madam Pomfrey came back into the Hospital Wing after him, and fluffed some pillows savagely. Lily listened to the matron’s heels clipping sharply against the stone floor, as she bustled around. She seemed to be slamming cupboard doors rather a lot, and, when she was still, Lily heard her sniffing. She wondered whether they had been close. Her face was familiar, and Lily had a vague notion that it very seldom smiled, but, other than that, she knew nothing about the woman.   
  
She opened her eyes as the door to Madam Pomfrey’s Office slammed closed, and looked about her.    
  
She imagined she ought to be feeling frightened, because she couldn’t remember anything about her life from the age of six upwards, but the castle, even the bed in the Hospital Wing, seemed familiar and reassuring. She got the feeling that she had been happy in this place. With excited curiosity, she sat up in bed and craned round to see out of the window. An emerald lawn stretched down to a steely-grey lake, its surface completely still, without a single ripple. In the distance were the grizzled oak trees of an immense forest and - farther off still - the grey-purple rock of a snow-capped mountain.   
  
All these things seemed right, comforting, exciting, and Lily knew that this place was exactly where she was meant to be, even if she couldn’t remember ever having been here before.   
  
She would tell her parents that she wanted to stay. She would trust her instincts, trust the nice man with the crooked nose and the long white beard. She would leap into the unknown, because, although she had fond memories of Manchester, there was no challenge there.   
  
The only thing she could feel, apart from excited curiosity, was love. She thought it was love, anyway; she had never, to her knowledge, felt anything like it before: it was half-thirst and half nausea, half butterflies in her stomach, and half arrows in her chest. She knew her heart was aching. She just couldn’t remember who for.   
  
There was a knock on the door of the Hospital Wing, almost too quiet to be heard, and a boy poked his head round the door, glancing all around the room, as though to check that they were alone.    
  
“Hello,” she said, smiling. “Are you here to see me? You can come in, Madam Pomfrey’s in her office.”   
  
The boy sidled sheepishly up to her bed-side. He had untidy, jet-black hair and glasses, which magnified his hazel eyes. His shyness, or whatever it was, made him seem much younger, but he must have been about sixteen, Lily thought. In her year, probably. He was holding a bunch of flowers, which he shoved onto her bedside table without looking at her.  
  
“Thank you,” she said, with bewildered amusement. “What’s your name?”   
  
The boy finally looked at her. There was an expression of supreme agony on his face. “James Potter,” he mumbled.   
  
“Oh,” she said. “Right. Hence the flowers.”   
  
“What do you mean?”   
  
“I heard them talking about you - Poppy and Professor Dumbledore. You’re the one who left a map of the castle lying around, and Malfoy used it to get in.”   
  
James Potter looked down at the floor again. “I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice was breaking, as though he was trying to hold back tears. “I don’t know how he got it - I didn’t mean for it to happen - ,”   
  
“It’s alright,” Lily said, alarmed at his emotion. “Dumbledore says he’ll be able to fix me, pretty much.”   
  
“Pretty much?” James asked in an agonized voice.   
  
“Well, you see, the Memory Charm wasn’t done properly. Dumbledore says Malfoy never did listen in class. If it had been a skilfully-performed memory charm, Dumbledore would be able to break through it, but because it was messed up, its effects will be less straightforward. It will take him a while to sort out. But he’ll do it,” Lily added, trying to encourage him. “He’s absolutely brilliant - there’s nothing he can’t do.”   
  
James was still looking at the floor morosely. She had a very strong impression that this was not his usual pose.   
  
“I’ll be alright,” she said, trying to keep her voice bright and gentle, “I always am - well, anyway, as far as I know. I _feel_ like the kind of girl who’s generally alright in the end.”   
  
James gave an unhappy snigger. “What can you remember?” he asked bleakly.   
  
“I can remember my mum and dad and sister. I can remember Manchester - that’s where I grew up. And I can remember all the spells I must have learnt here. I can still access my knowledge - I just can’t remember how I got it.” She paused and then, almost apologetically, she said: “Were we friends, you and me?”   
  
James gave her a strange, painful smile. “I wanted us to be,” he said.   
  
Lily smiled. She reached under her pillow and brought out some parchment and a quill. “Well, as of now, we are,” she said in a business-like voice. “Just tell me everything, _everything_ , about the magical world. Don’t scrimp on the details. I want to know it all - why the robes, why the secrecy, why the Slytherins think I’m a waste of space - ,”    
  
“You’re not a waste of space,” Potter protested, as though her words had stung him.   
  
“I know,” she said calmly. “I just want their mistake to be explained.”   
  
“There’s no explaining it. They’re just idiots.”   
  
“Oh. OK.” She scribbled on the parchment. “Slytherins. Idiots. Got it. Now what?”   
  
She had made him smile. Unfortunately, this just seemed to make him more nervous. “What - where shall I start?” he stammered.   
  
“Hogwarts,” she said. “Tell me about Hogwarts. How old is it? Who built it? Who are my friends here, and what do I do with them? Do I have hobbies? Do I play sports? What’s my favourite food?”   
  
“OK,” James was laughing. He looked quite handsome when he laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.” He sat down in the chair by her bed-side and started to talk - about The Ministry of Magic, Dragons, Floo Powder, Meg Valance and Mary MacDonald, the Magical Ethics Club, Quidditch and Voldemort. He was still nervous - and, once or twice, he looked up at her, and lost the thread of what he was saying. But, for the most part, he seemed to relax. The sensation of being listened to was clearly one he enjoyed.   
  
He touched on the subject of the Death Eaters once or twice, and, when he listed the people he suspected of being involved with them, he mentioned a boy called Snape - Lily felt an inexplicable little wrench in the pit of her stomach, as though she’d missed a step going downstairs - but she didn’t say anything. Potter seemed to get agitated at the mention of the name, too - he clenched his fists and ground his teeth a little.   
  
“So I’m a muggle-born,” she began, when, for the first time in twenty minutes, Potter fell silent, “and You-Know-Who thinks we should all be sent back to the muggles?”   
  
“Or worse,” Potter added grimly.   
  
“Are there any other muggle-borns at the school?”   
  
“Yeah, loads. But not all of them admit to it. I reckon there are some in Slytherin, but they’ve found wizards to pose as their parents. Dangerous, though. Wizard couples who help muggle-borns, or even ones who adopt muggle-borns, get targeted. There was this one couple - fostered about ten kids but, because they’d all been abandoned by their parents, nobody could prove they weren‘t muggle-borns, and, last year, the couple disappeared. Even their children haven’t heard from them - they’re still here at the castle, Dumbledore’s looking after them. Some people reckon they went into hiding - but I reckon they got _got_ ,” he finished ominously.    
  
“That’s sick,” Lily cried. “That’s really sick.”   
  
Potter was watching her dreamily - he seemed to be admiring her indignation. Lily blushed.   
  
“When you get your memories back,” he began tentatively, “will you promise you’ll still talk to me?”   
  
Lily smiled. “I can’t,” she said playfully. “What if I find out something about you? Something that explains why we were never friends?”  
  
“I was different then,” he protested, without thinking.   
  
“Aha!” Lily exclaimed. “So there is something?”   
  
“I was an idiot,” Potter said, his eyes round and passionate. “I was an idiot, and you told me so. But everything’s different now. I _know_ I was an idiot. That’s got to count for something.”   
  
Lily was laughing at his serious face. “It ought to, I suppose,” she said reluctantly. “It depends how much of an idiot you were. And how bad you feel about it.”   
  
But Potter never got a chance to tell her, because Dumbledore re-entered the room, his blue eyes glittering with the same mixture of amusement and distress that Lily had sensed in him earlier.   
  
He nodded at Potter. “James,” he said courteously. “Has Madam Pomfrey by any chance, taken leave of her senses and given you permission to be here?”   
  
“No, sir,” James replied sheepishly.   
  
“I did not think so. She is not the kind of woman who can be parted from her senses without a fight. I need hardly remind you, given the amount of times you have been in here yourself for your numerous Quidditch injuries, that she is particularly fierce in the care of her patients, and would never allow a victim of magical memory loss to be confused by visitors.”   
  
“I just came to tell her I was sorry, sir.”   
  
“I have no problem with you being sorry, James, only with you being sorry here.”  
  
“Yes, sir.” James gave Lily an embarrassed little parting smile, and left the room, leaving her alone with those soft but sharp blue eyes. She suddenly felt apprehensive.   
  
“Now, Lily,” Dumbledore began, sitting in the chair that Potter had just vacated. “I would like to explain the procedure for breaking through memory charms. Naturally, your memories are not gone, merely inaccessible. Extremely complex memory charms can implant false memories in the mind of the victim, and these are particularly difficult to unravel, since the witch or wizard attempting to break through them must separate real from false memories. Luckily, it would take a more accomplished wizard than Lucius Malfoy to strike you down with one of those.”   
  
Lily smiled appreciatively.   
  
“Legilimency is required in order to break through memory charms. Do you remember what this is?”   
  
“Mind magic,” Lily said immediately, feeling a thrill at knowing the answer to a teacher’s question that she sensed was a familiar one. “The ability to extract thoughts or memories from your victim.”   
  
“Victim is a strong word,” Dumbledore said, smiling, “but, essentially, you are correct. When your memories are exposed to me, they will become open to you. I’m afraid that this means I will be unable to respect your privacy, Lily: it is impossible to predict which memories I will see and which I will not. I therefore beg you to excuse the interference. It is the only way.”   
  
“I understand, sir.”  
  
Lily braced herself for some kind of shock, or pain, but there was only a sensation of vertigo when Dumbledore raised his wand and cried: ‘Legilimens’. Images were suddenly rushing past her mind’s eye, sometimes too quickly for her to recognize, sometimes slower, as though casually clamouring for her attention.    
  
One memory, Dumbledore seemed to linger on - it was a half-lit dusk, smelling of pine resin, and she was flying on a broomstick, with Meg’s distinctive, barking laughter echoing in the background. Lily saw, as though she were a bystander, her flying form catch the Quaffle, and throw it through a hovering hoop, before dropping several feet, almost plummeting into the emerald grass below. Recovering clumsily, she pointed her broomstick upwards, still grinning with pride at the goal she had scored. A holler from Meg, a curse from Sirius Black, and a telling silence from Potter. Lily turned to see him staring at her with the same dreamy look she had seen him wear earlier that day. When Sirius threw him the Quaffle, it zoomed straight past his left ear. He recovered, though, and magnificently, darting down like a dragon-fly, snatching the Quaffle out of the air moments before it hit the ground, and turning his broomstick sharply, so that he skimmed the grass, before shooting upwards once more. He was the embodiment of the phrase ‘in his element’. Lily saw her past self glowering with reluctant admiration. She had felt - she remembered it now - so vulnerable, so clumsy, up in the air on an unsteady broomstick, while Potter zoomed here and there, as though propelled through the air by the power of his confidence. You hardly noticed the broomstick at all.   
  
Lily fell back against her pillows, sweating and dizzy. She had been affected by that memory, in a way that she couldn’t immediately pin down.   
  
Still, there were other memories to pay attention to now: they were all at her fingertips, clamouring to be re-examined, petted, polished and stroked.   
  
It was a while before she noticed Dumbledore again. He was politely examining his fingernails, waiting for her to tear herself away from the happy reunion with her memories.   
  
“Are there any noticeable gaps?” he asked, when she looked at him again.  
  
Lily thought about it. Severus was the most noticeable new-comer. She could now locate the source of the ache she’d been feeling all afternoon. The memory of him torturing Lucius Malfoy was suddenly much more distressing than it had been before.  
  
She had always feared that hatred was his one consuming passion, and now she knew for sure.    
  
“I don’t know,” she said hesitantly.   
  
“There probably will be,” Dumbledore said gently, “but they will come back to you eventually. Don’t force yourself to remember. Memories are like Unicorns – they cannot be caught by strength or guile – only by inattention. You have to turn your back on them and pretend to be interested in something else: then they will come to you.”   
  
“Thank you, sir,” Lily murmured.   
  
Dumbledore brushed aside her gratitude with a wave of his hand. There was a hard look in his eyes, and Lily wondered whether he blamed himself for what had happened to her - though how he thought he could contend with Malfoy's potion-addled madness and Potter's genial stupidity, she had no idea. They were both forces to be reckoned with.   
  
“You will, of course, be telling your parents that you wish to stay?” Dumbledore asked tentatively.   
  
“Yes,” Lily replied, surprised at the question, “of course.”   
  
He smiled: it was a complicated smile - a patch-work quilt of emotions, and Lily was feeling too confused to unravel it right at that moment, so she just smiled back. He was a strange man, Dumbledore.


	29. Where the Action is

Severus Snape stared morosely into the darkness outside the window of The Hanged Man. There was nothing to see, because of the mist outside (magically conjured, and permanent, to disguise the shady dealings that went on down Knockturn Alley): the window was simply a black mirror, reflecting his pale, forlorn face back at him, but it was better than looking at the people inside the Hanged Man - or, anyway, it was tonight.   
  
Tonight was a special night in the tavern. Lucius Malfoy, along with a dozen other under-cover Death Eaters, were holding a gathering for all the most important pure-blood wizards in the magical community. Scores of witches and wizards in expensive-looking dress-robes were arriving one by one, trailing the mist and creeping black ivy that infested the street outside.   
  
Malfoy had organized a muggle-baiting match for their entertainment (this was a wizard sport, centuries-old but understandably illegal, in which muggles were placed under the Imperius Curse and forced to fight to the death). The show tonight was an excuse to recruit influential wizards who might be sympathetic to the Death Eaters‘ cause. The Dark Lord was adamant that supporters should first be gathered by charm and then, if necessary, by force.     
  
Muggle-baiting was popular, especially with ‘the right sort’ of wizard. Every time Snape’s mother had emerged from her cloud of resentment for long enough to notice him, she’d urged him to make friends with ‘the right sort’ of wizard. He wished she could see him now, wearing dress robes, watching the finely-dressed pure-bloods filter through the door in their glittering finery, listening to their high-pitched laughter, and feeling desolate.   
  
Every place where Lily had kissed him last week was aching like a bruise. And every time he thought of her, those bruises were being prodded.   
  
Nothing was going right. He’d lived through the happiest moment of his life, five minutes of blazing wonder, and now he was back where he’d been at the beginning, but with the memory of that happiness eating away at him, making the darkness darker. He felt as though he had been scooped out of a well and shown the sky for five bright, disorienting minutes, and then, blinking with dazzled joy, he’d been picked up and put back in the well forever, and told to be thankful for it. Loss was more bitter when you knew what it was you were missing out on.   
  
And yet he couldn’t wish that it hadn’t happened, that was the worst part. He couldn’t even wish to forget because, painful as it was to the Snape of the present, the Snape of the past - that stupid, trusting, hopeful idiot - had been happy.   
  
The Hanged Man was looking its finest. Stuffed werewolf heads leered down from the oak-panelled walls. Leather armchairs were clustered around varnished mahogany tables, and the barman - hollow-eyed, greasy-faced and shaking - was moving through the crowd with a silver tray, on which small shot-glasses of Firewhisky had been arranged, evidently by somebody with steadier hands. The liquid in the glasses was sloshing around as the barman trembled. He didn’t make eye-contact with anybody.  
  
Severus couldn’t believe that all of these civilized, rich, important people, were here to see a fist-fight. He supposed that, for all the spectacle of magic - for all the loud bangs and coloured lights - nothing could beat the entertainment value of the clenched fist.   
  
Aloysius Black arrived with his three daughters: Bellatrix, Andromeda and Narcissa - two of them sneering, one of them shimmering. Bellatrix looked sleek, haughty and menacing, like a cat sat on its haunches, surveying a room full of mice. She was wearing a long, tight dress of heavy red velvet - the material looked strained over her chest, partly because she was breathing very heavily. Snape recognised this as an after-effect of one of her tantrums; he had the distinct impression that she’d been wrestled into her current state of elegance: there were scratches all down her willowy arms - only half-covered by the black lace gloves she was wearing - and her eyes still had their manic gleam, as though some kind of ferocious beast were peering out through them.       
  
Snape avoided her gaze by picking up a shot of Firewhisky from the barman’s trembling tray, and downing it in one. It only made the tender spots where Lily had kissed him still more tender.  
  
Andromeda was also sneering, though for different reasons to Bellatrix. She was looking around at the sombre wizards in the room with barely-concealed distaste. But it was amused distaste; there was a shade of enjoyment in it, Snape was sure, because she too was breathing deeply, and the corners of her thin, immaculately pencilled, lips were turned up slightly.   
  
Alone of the three girls, Narcissa looked calm, poised and unruffled. She was wearing her blue satin dress, with a pair of long white gloves that were only slightly lighter than her pearl-coloured skin. Diamond earrings dangled from her ears like raindrops. She was a vision of ghostly magnificence, shimmering as though she was draped in morning dew.   
  
Snape was amused at how everyone seemed to cower before her, as though her beauty and brightness hurt their eyes; he knew now that Narcissa was one of the most evil creatures ever to grace the earth - even the magical earth, which was full of dark and despicable creatures - yet there was nothing about her appearance that could give it away. She looked like a marble statue depicting some pious virgin. Only her scent - a sickly sweetness, like rotting flowers - hinted at the unwholesomeness of her soul.  
  
Still, he felt a contemptuous attraction to her, for the very reason that he knew her to be despicable. There was something very exciting about knowing things that nobody else knew.   
  
“How is Malfoy?” she asked coolly, coming up to him. “Still at home, nursing a broken heart?”   
  
Snape didn‘t even turn to look at her. “I don’t know where he is,” he said calmly. “Dead is always a reasonable assumption these days.”   
  
Narcissa smiled humourlessly. “Well, I hope he doesn’t get any blood over that nice, big mansion he’s going to leave me in his will.”   
  
“You disgust me,” said Snape. “And, let me tell you, Narcissa Black, that‘s not easy to do.”   
  
“Oh, please,” Narcissa muttered, looking around at the crowd, “all anyone has to do is mention James Potter.”   
  
Snape’s stomach tightened, but he didn’t allow her to see his anger. Instead, he just sneered: “It’s a pity you can’t take an OWL in witless bitching, Narcissa - you might have got at least one grade higher that a D. Is there troll ancestry some way back in that glittering genealogy of yours? That might explain it.”   
  
Narcissa was looking at him with furious curiosity. “That’s interesting,” she said lightly.   
  
“What’s interesting?”   
  
“You’ve developed an immunity.” She looked straight at him, an expression of interest warming those dead, grey eyes. “Have you taken Hemlock before?”   
  
“What do you mean, _before_?”    
  
“It’s my perfume, cretin!” she spat. “A solution of Hemlock and vanilla. It’s supposed to turn men into acquiescent idiots. You’ve mastered the ‘idiot’ part, but you’re not particularly acquiescent today.”   
  
“What did you have me poison Malfoy for, if you can turn men into acquiescent idiots?” Snape asked angrily.   
  
“It didn’t work on him either,” she said, with a contemptuous shrug. “What do you suppose the two of you have in common, chemically speaking?”   
  
Snape’s mind was elsewhere. “You put undiluted Hemlock on your skin?” he asked.   
  
Narcissa pouted. “I tested it on a mudblood first.”  
  
“I bet you didn’t test it for long-term exposure.” Snape murmured, feeling happier all the time. He loved it when Narcissa’s confidence faltered. It was the chinks in that smooth, alabaster façade that excited him.   
  
“Why?” she whispered, looking over her shoulder to check that they weren’t being overheard. “What will happen to me?”   
  
Snape shrugged. “I couldn’t say,” he said. “No-one’s ever been stupid enough to repeatedly rub Hemlock into their skin before.”   
  
“Take an educated guess,” she snarled.   
  
Snape beamed. This was the way he liked her: she didn’t look pretty at all with her face screwed up in fury, and those little white teeth bared. It was exciting to get her worked-up enough to lose that cool disdain she usually forced on everyone.  
  
“I don’t think it’ll kill you,” he muttered, “but the skin on your neck will probably wrinkle and become translucent, so that all your veins are visible.”   
  
He paused to enjoy the effect that this disclosure was having on Narcissa. She couldn‘t have looked more horrified if he‘d told her she would grow a second head. “Severus,” she whispered urgently, “how do I stop it?”   
  
Snape pretended to consider. “Well, this is difficult magic,” he said, “it’s not something that can be cured with antidotes. Magic is all about balance. You have to give back what you’ve taken, in a manner of speaking.”   
  
Narcissa looked positively wild. “What manner of speaking?”   
  
“You have to let men exploit you,” Snape said. “You have to be an acquiescent idiotess.”  
  
It suddenly dawned on Narcissa that he might be making fun of her. She gave him one of her artificial smiles - they were more a curl of the lips than a smile, Snape thought, because they stopped at her mouth, and didn’t cause a single crease to appear on the rest of her face.   
  
Snape thought of Lily’s smile as she had been untying his school tie - a smile that used her whole face, her whole soul, even - and suddenly every inch of him ached for her. He felt weak with hopeless, miserable desire, and he barely heard Narcissa’s parting sneer:  
  
“If you’ll excuse me, Severus, I have to talk to some people who matter.”  
  
She walked off, trailing that scent of rotting sweetness behind her.   
  
Snape had never been in the muggle-baiting room before. Every time he’d come to The Hanged Man - to meet Lucius Malfoy, or to study the books on mind magic and magical combat that were kept in the library down the hall - the muggle-baiting room had been packed with shouting, squabbling figures, waving their parchment betting slips in the air, and hiding the ring from view. Now he saw that the place was like an old-fashioned lecture theatre, with wooden seats rising in tiers around a circular platform in the centre of the room. Set in the middle of the stands, to the left and the right of the central platform, were two viewing stands, on which the wizards controlling the muggles were supposed to stand. The muggles themselves were nowhere to be seen.  
  
Snape and Regulus made their way to their seats: Regulus seemed to have latched on to him, sensing that he might be a useful person to have around in a crisis. At any rate, the dislike of Sirius Black was a good enough recommendation for Regulus. Snape was not sorry to have him around, because he had seen eyes lingering on him, and heard mutterings about ‘the disgraced line of the Princes’. He gathered that his mother was known amongst these people as ‘the spoiled Princess’. It helped to have a pure-blood around, to make Snape look as though he belonged here.  
  
Bella sat on Snape’s other side and Regulus, raising his eyebrows, leaned over to Severus and whispered:   
  
“You know, Bella really digs you.”   
  
“Digs me?” whispered Snape. “She’d bury me.”   
  
Regulus sniggered. Snape was just looking around for Malfoy, when he heard Regulus murmur:   
  
“Is that true what you said to ‘Cissa, about magic being all about balance?”  
  
It didn’t surprise Snape to hear that Regulus had been listening. Eavesdropping was widespread amongst Slytherins, since they were all pretty much spies in training, and Severus would usually have been more careful, but this misery was making him reckless.     
  
“Yeah, it‘s true,” he said.   
  
“So magic takes something out of you?”  
  
“Yes. In fact, every time you use the Cruciatus Curse, a little of your ability to feel pain, or pleasure, is taken away. That’s why Bellatrix is very difficult to hurt, but it takes her forever to - ,”   
  
Regulus didn’t let him finish the sentence. He barked with laughter. “How do you know?” he asked.   
  
“Lucius,” Snape said shortly. “Apparently, she has to do weirder and weirder things just to get in the mood.”    
  
“Brilliant!” exclaimed Regulus. “This is going to go down very well at the Christmas dinner table!”   
  
Snape shrugged. If Regulus wanted to get killed, that was his own business. Still, he didn‘t want to be robbed of the opportunity to show off his knowledge, so he added: “You know, the reverse is also true. Healers who use the Anaesthesia charm all the time, to take away people’s pain, become extremely sensitive to pleasure. If you so much as shake their hand the wrong way…”   
  
This time he chose not to finish the sentence, out of a half-hearted attempt at decency. Why he should be worrying about decency here, where muggles were being forced to fight to the death, he had no idea - yet somehow, despite their blood-thirsty leanings, he suspected that his mother might regard these audience members as ‘polite company’.  
  
“Shame there aren’t any good-looking Healers,” Regulus remarked.   
  
With a pang, Snape thought of Lily. “There might be one day,” he said.    
  
A sudden hush descended, and they both turned their eyes to the viewing platform on the right hand side of the stalls. Evans Rosier had got up, and was waving his hands for silence.   
  
Rosier was a natural public-speaker. Every word he spoke was accompanied by flourishing hand-gestures and dramatic emphasis. He was also an ostentatious dresser, and was wearing his finest tonight: long, billowing black robes spangled with glittering-golden moons and stars. Most Death Eaters tended to dress inconspicuously, to skulk in the shadows, or blend in with the crowd. Rosier scorned these drab compromises: after all, how could you be feared if you were never noticed? Showmanship was ninety per cent of power, as far as Rosier was concerned.    
  
He had a prodigious collection of muggle artefacts, taken as trophies from muggles he’d killed. He was wearing one of them tonight: a black cowboy hat, tilted jauntily over his bald head. He looked like one of those under-cover Ministry wizards, dressed in mismatched muggle clothing. He was also smoking a cigar: a muggle habit that he had started ironically, and now pursued with all the vigour of his excessive personality.       
  
“Ladies and gentlemen, witches and wizards, warlocks, hags and ghouls,” Rosier began in a deep, thrilling voice, with one hand raised dramatically, like a grotesque impersonation of the Statue of Liberty. “Tonight, we examine the power of uncivilized, un-magical man, lest we forget that these brutish savages need our supervision and our governance.”   
  
There was a rumble of agreement from the crowd, like building thunder. Aloysius Black shouted: “Hear, hear!”   
  
“These creatures fight face to face with their bare hands,” Rosier said, with ghoulish enthusiasm, “rather than using the energy and inventiveness of their minds. Their method of combat is messy, primitive and cruel; they open one another’s skin, they break bones, tear muscles and sinews, use their teeth and nails. Therefore, as a cautionary tale to all those in the Ministry who would treat these creatures as though they had souls, like you and me, let us examine just what they can do to one another, when there is no wizard around to intervene. Let us demonstrate how muggles resolve disputes - and how they make everything, including one another’s faces, untidy.”   
  
Rosier pointed his wand at his throat, and removed the megaphone charm with a non-verbal spell. Snape watched this with interest. He was always enthralled whenever the Death Eaters - with their surly, aristocratic confidence - made magic seem effortless. Spells seemed to pour from their wands just as disdain dripped from their lips. Snape wanted to emulate them: wanted to seem graceful, untroubled and dignified - and, most of the time, he could manage it, but every now and again, passion made him limp and squirm, like one of their pathetic muggle victims. It was a handicap, no question.       
  
Rosier had neglected to mention that the muggles were being forced to act like savages. The savagery was being orchestrated by the supposedly civilized beings. His hypocrisy was spectacular, but nobody else seemed to have noticed it. As far as the audience was concerned, this was just a dramatic re-enactment of fights that happened constantly in the disordered muggle world. Muggle-baiting was sport and story-telling, prowess and propaganda.   
  
Snape was surprised to find that Bella’s hand had wandered onto his thigh. When Rosier extinguished the lights with another casual flick of his wand, she dug her nails in tightly. She was looking towards the ring, her face a rictus of manic excitement.    
  
Stifling a cry, Snape reached into his pocket for his wand, and shot a stinging hex at her hand. Bella gasped, and withdrew it, but her eyes were still glinting, and Snape had the sneaking suspicion that she’d enjoyed it.   
  
In the sudden hush, a door at the back of the room opened, and a blonde-haired muggle - grizzled, scarred, unshaven, dressed in blue jeans, with his torso bare and knotted with muscles - moved sluggishly into the centre of the room.  
  
This was Rosier’s favourite weapon. The muggle-baiters tended to call their fighters by ferocious, intimidating nick-names, so Rosier, with his usual mixture of aggression and light-heartedness, had called his Bruiser Thuggle, the Invincible Muggle.   
  
Snape watched the muggle blinking benignly with a feeling of dread in his stomach. He had learned, over the years, to suppress his sympathy; that was the first rule of survival in the magical world. You had to accept the way they did things there. This muggle was probably no different from his father - vicious and drunk; perhaps he, too, had made his children watch while he’d beaten his wife, telling them to watch and learn. Still, Severus felt trapped in the dark room, with the prospect of watching this man’s death looming over him like a palpable cloud.   
  
Beside him, Bellatrix let out a little squeal of excitement.    
  
He thought uneasily about what Lily would say if she knew what he had witnessed here. Well, he would just have to make sure she never knew. He was going to ensure she kept her innocence, and if he had to pawn his in order to keep hers, it was well worth it; his had been a patchy, thread-bare old thing, anyway.   
  
His stomach tightened with nausea - but, beneath it, he was becoming aware of a prickle of excitement. It was the comparison between this man and his father that had done it. Now, he was suddenly noticing that the man’s hazel eyes were exactly the same shade as James Potter’s, and thinking how wonderful it would be if Potter could be in that ring, powerless and wilting beneath the hateful gaze of all these onlookers. Suddenly, the air in the room was thick with the potential of violence, and Snape was gasping it eagerly; it was making him feel light-headed. The sickly, swooping thrill of having power over someone was so beguiling.   
  
Another muggle came out of the room - bald-headed and muscular, covered with faded tattoos. Avery’s father had got up onto the left-hand viewing platform and raised his wand: the bald muggle’s face had become blank and expressionless.   
  
Rosier did the same, and Bruiser was suddenly poised with vacant concentration. The two fighters circled each other, while the wizards controlling them flicked and swished their wands, wordlessly directing their movements, like ghoulish conductors.   
  
Of course, Snape had grown up listening to these dull thuds, to the curses and groans of a one-sided fight. But he had never seen violence like this before. The muggles were so resilient. He gazed, enthralled, at the spectacle in front of him. The bald-headed muggle landed a punch to Bruiser’s kidney. Bruiser doubled up and was kneed in the face by his opponent. There was a sickening crunch, and blood began to pour - literally pour - from his nose, as though it were a running tap. It flowed down his neck and over his bare torso; Bellatrix gave an excited little moan. But Bruiser was straightening, smearing the blood across his chest with a roar of defiance. The crowd roared too and, as though the noise were feeding him, Bruiser swelled to his full height, ignoring the pummelling that the bald muggle was now visiting on his ribs, and drew back his hand.   
  
Snape knew that motion only too well. He was used to seeing the other person cowering before it, perhaps stealing a glance at her son to see that he was paying attention. This is what muggles are, that glance had always seemed to say: all of them. You give them an inch, they’ll break your nose.   
  
Snape had always watched the arc of that drawn-back fist, as though in slow motion, and had felt winded by the blow he’d only been watching. He could feel himself slipping into his Occlumency state even now, hypnotising himself into that wonderful state of sneering indifference, climbing to that height of detachment from which he could contemplate the most horrific scenes with only vague amusement. Those silly emotional creatures, he thought: they’re contemptible, all of them. Logic stole over him, replacing the nausea and excitement with a sense of almost god-like disdain. He saw that these creatures were petty and cruel; scrabbling, clawing, pathetic beasts, thrashing everywhere, as though in their death throes. Control was the only thing that endured: power was the only thing that had meaning in this bloody chaos of flesh.   
  
The punch landed and the bald muggle collapsed. He lay on the floor, twitching slightly, while Bruiser placed his foot on the man’s back, beat his own chest and roared. The crowd echoed him. The noise sounded very far off to Severus, as though he were underwater. The crowd rose to their feet - applauding, jeering, cat-calling, howling with triumph or despair - it all sounded the same to him.   
  
He rose with them, joined in the clapping, watched dispassionately as the recumbent muggle was dragged unceremoniously from the room. He felt like an amnesiac.   
  
It was the memory of Lily that came back to him first. Very suddenly, he remembered her conspiratorial smile - the one that made you feel she was sharing her deepest, darkest secrets with you, even when she was talking about the weather. They were mixed feelings: as well as the warmth of her memory, there was the dull ache of missing her, and the sharper, stinging sensation in his thigh from where Bella had dug her nails in. He realized suddenly that he had cramp, and muttered a charm to relieve it.   
  
Rosier was near him, standing by the door, and people were enthusiastically wringing his hand.   
  
“Marvellous, my dear fellow,” said Aloysius Black. “You play the sport as I have rarely ever seen it played. A tour de force. Such poise and concentration! You really made your fighter resilient, single-minded, ruthless.”   
  
Rosier chuckled lazily, basking in the praise.   
  
“I still don’t see why you have to use the same muggle all the time,” came the shrill, scornful voice of Bellatrix Black.     
  
“All great warriors have their favourite weapons,” Rosier replied. “And Bruiser is particularly adept at taking direction.”     
  
“You named it?” Bellatrix sneered. “That’s the first sign of getting attached to it, Rosier.”       
  
Rosier smirked. “Miss Black, I am attached to it. It’s everything a muggle should be. Obedient, pliable, resilient. A model for his kind. When he’s dead, I intend to have him stuffed and placed in a museum.”   
  
Bella raised her eyebrows, unsure whether Rosier was joking. It was a dangerous thing to say, but Rosier was something of a favourite of the Dark Lord’s, and could get away with a great deal.  
  
“You will give the creature ideas above its station,” she insisted.   
  
“You are such a pessimist, Miss Black. To you, everyone is trying to get away with something. But I, I see the world through Rosier spectacles.”  
  
Bella sighed at this dismal witticism, and turned to where her cousin and Snape were sitting. “I wish the fight had been longer,” she mused lazily. “Avery could have animated the dead body of his fighter, to give us more of a show.”  
  
“Nothing satisfies you, does it, Bella?” Regulus asked cheerfully.   
  
Bellatrix looked at Severus. She seemed to sense a comment about Lucius Malfoy coming on, because she moved off to join her father as quickly as possible.   
  
Snape was relieved to see her go. She was looking at him too often for comfort these days.    
  
The muggle, Bruiser, was personally escorted back to his cage by Rosier. Bruiser was kept alive because he was so hardy, and because he responded to Rosier’s will smoothly, instantly, and never had that glassy-eyed look that creatures under the Imperius Curse tended to exhibit. He was incredibly suggestible.  
  
Rosier kept him docile with a succession of poorly-administered memory charms: after all, a muggle who didn’t even know his own name would be less likely to wander off, looking for friends or family; he clung to Rosier with a kind of savage bewilderment, not knowing whether he was friend or foe, only knowing that he gave the orders. Orders were all Bruiser Thuggle seemed to want. His brain accepted the memory charms with the same easiness that it accepted the Imperius Curse; it seemed to be thirsty for direction.  
  
He always won. And, though, everybody said that this was because of Rosier’s skill rather than the Muggle’s, Rosier still kept him. All sportsmen were superstitious, he would say, whenever anybody commented on this; you had to keep your good luck charm handy.


	30. Rosura, Part Eight

Snape was lying on his bed in the Slytherin dormitory, staring out of the window at the rain-lashed castle grounds. Down in the common room there were no windows, just squashy leather arm-chairs, an industrial-sized fireplace and lots of shaded lamps - presumably to disguise the sordid dealings of the inhabitants, though Severus suspected that the low light-levels had also served to make pure-blood witches and wizards seem more attractive - certainly, he had seen Avery’s parents, and he was convinced that they could only have got together in the dark. Here in the dormitories, however, there were wide little windows close to the level of the ceiling, surrounded by bars, and half-covered with grass and ivy.  It gave the light in the dormitories a greenish tinge. You learned to recognise the shoes of passers by - Bella’s scuffed leather ankle-boots, as featured in Snape’s recurring nightmares, and Narcissa’s polished high-heels. But today, nobody was out in the grounds, because it was raining mercilessly.   
  
Snape heard the dormitory door open, but didn’t look away from his contemplation of the darkening sky. After a few moments, the smell of rotting flowers announced Narcissa’s presence. Snape sighed.   
  
She didn’t seem in the mood for exchanging pleasantries, because her first words, uttered in her usual cruel-but-silky drawl, were:   
  
“If you wanted the mud blood, why did you come to rescue me?”   
  
“Believe me,” said Snape coldly, “it wasn’t my idea.”   
  
“I think it was.”   
  
“You can think what you like,” he said shortly.    
  
“I think you were jealous of Malfoy having me all to himself.”   
  
“What an interesting theory.”    
  
“And I’m not sorry. I like you, Severus,” she murmured.   
  
“Yeah?” Snape said, in a very bored voice. “Well,  you’ll understand if I don’t leap for joy, something tells me that your love is as poisonous as your hatred.”   
  
Narcissa’s playful smile faded, but she recovered herself. “Why this attitude all of a sudden, Severus?” she asked gently. “Aren’t we friends anymore?”   
  
“You took everything from me,” Snape replied in a hollow voice, still staring out of the window.    
  
“Oh, please,” she sneered. “What did you have in the first place? A half-blood ancestry, a muggle upbringing, a beastly father and a disgraced mother: neither of your parents could perform magic, from what I hear. And - oh, yes - you had a crush on a filthy mudblood.”   
  
Snape clenched his fists and narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.   
  
“What did I take from you, Severus?” she went on, purring with her own cruelty, thrilling at the way he flinched. “You had nothing but embarrassments to begin with. Even if you had any chance with that - that _creature_ \- and, let me assure you, you did not, she would have destroyed you - ruined all your prospects, alienated all your friends.”   
  
Snape sat up, the better to glare at her. “What prospects?” he said angrily. “What friends?”   
  
“You can have both, if you are only strong enough to take them,” Narcissa breathed. “Malfoy is your friend - ,”   
  
Snape smiled unpleasantly. “So, that’s it,” he said. “I wondered why you were wasting your time with me. What do you want me to do this time - deliver love-notes to him?”   
  
Narcissa sat down on the bed beside him, and gripped the front of his shirt, pressing her face extremely close to his. Severus could see nothing but those corpse-grey eyes, and smell nothing but her intense perfume - like rotting lilacs - but he didn’t move away. Coldly, he said: “I wasn’t joking about that Hemlock perfume dissolving your skin. Stop using it.”   
  
“I will, if you do something for me,” she breathed.   
  
Severus raised his eyebrows. “I hate to be pedantic,” he said, “but the first thing was for you. You think I care if your skin goes see-through?”   
  
“Yes, I think you care,” she murmured, putting her lips close to his ear. “Or, if you do not already, you will soon. I can give you everything you could possibly desire in the magical world - power, influence,” she paused artfully, and pressed her palm to his chest, smiling at the rapid heartbeat she could feel fluttering under her fingers, “pleasure…”  
  
Snape did not remove her hand. There was a hot throbbing in his head - an enticing oblivion was beckoning to him but, as always, his doubts stepped in front of it, and cleared their throats in an officious kind of way, ready to announce their long list of objections.   
  
“Kiss me,” Narcissa whispered.  
  
Severus withdrew into that ice-cube of rationality at the centre of his brain, and said:  
  
“How do I know you haven’t smeared your lips with Belladonna, or Arsenic, or Acromantula venom?”   
  
“You don’t,” she whispered. “That’s what makes it so exciting.”   
  
Snape could feel anger spreading like numbness through his body. This bitch had taken Lily from him - her shrill, spoilt screams had prised him away from the most intense happiness he’d ever known. She _owed_ him.   
  
The contemptuous attraction he’d always felt for Narcissa stirred within him. He grabbed her roughly and pulled her to him, squeezing her waist, digging his nails into her flesh.   
  
Severus tried not to think about Lily as he pressed his lips to Narcissa’s, but it was no good, the comparison had formed in his mind before he’d even kissed her  - Narcissa’s skin was cold and white, and there was no pretty laughter, no eager clumsiness, no hiding behind her hair in shyness. Narcissa didn’t even seem to want him; she was so fake, grasping and insincere.   
  
Everyone except Lily was playing a game with him, trying to get something from him, trying to torment or manipulate him. And suddenly he felt weary and sick and couldn’t go on hiding it.     
  
Furious with himself, and with her, Snape pulled Narcissa away. “Leave me alone,” he said coldly. “I don’t want anything to do with you or Malfoy, have you got that? I hope he rots in Azkaban, and I hope you rot in your mansion, you spoilt brat.”  
  
Narcissa watched him go with fascinated indignation. Nobody had ever refused her advances before. Perhaps Severus just didn’t like women. No, it couldn’t be explained away as easily as that, because she had seen him in the arms of that Mudblood. He had been _unrecognizable_ in the arms of that Mudblood.   
  
Narcissa was a true scientist. Everything she ever did was motivated by the desire to see how far she could push things: her magic, her beauty, other people’s restraint…     
  
She suddenly realized that she was cherishing a growing passion for both Malfoy and Severus. She couldn’t seem to separate her attraction to one from her attraction to the other. Malfoy could be reckless and desperate, and Severus could slap away the hand that fed him, with an angry independence that was just… beguiling.   
  
Of course, he was not attractive, in so many words (in fact, a limitless amount of words would not serve to make him attractive), but still, there was something pleasing about his stark, sallow, hook-nosed profile: something, not handsome, but sublime, like a ruined abbey or a dead, twisted tree.     
  
How curious that she had lived her entire life without feeling an attraction to anyone, and now two men had come along to tempt her at once. She would marry Malfoy - of that she was adamant. But Severus… well, Severus would be a bit of fun. Her ancestors had always had time for fun, however seriously they took their marriage alliances.   
  
He definitely wanted her. He had been using the last of his restraint to refuse her. He wouldn’t do it again. As for Malfoy, she would ease his suffering gradually: there was no need to rush. She would let him speak to her next week, or the week after, and take it from there. Severus would be her amusement in the meantime.   
  
  
Severus walked rapidly through the dungeon corridors, paying no attention to where he was going. He felt hot, confused and angry, and it wasn’t helping that Peeves the Poltergeist kept leaping out from behind suits of armour at him, and singing: ‘Snakey Snapey, the Memory Thief - kissed the girls and gave them grief’.   
  
Nobody really knew what had happened down in the dungeon but Peeves, who could navigate the currents of gossip in the castle better than anyone, had managed to piece together a rough version of events. He clearly assumed that Snape had been in league with Malfoy, and that they’d lured Lily down to the dungeons in order to wipe her memory of the magical world and get her to go back to the muggles. Peeves also seemed to know about the Rosura potion - though Snape wasn’t sure how. Perhaps Narcissa had been talking to him - she had seen him kissing Lily, after all.   
  
Snape stopped when he was sure the corridor was empty, and leaned against a statue of Rowena Ravenclaw taming her Giant Eagle.      
  
He needed to see Lily. It didn’t matter if she squirmed with pity at the sight of him. Even her pity would be better than this uncertainty. He needed to know what she remembered; he needed to know whether there was any hope. With his fatalistic imagination, he’d naturally assumed that there wasn’t, but it wasn’t as easy to banish hope as he’d hoped. If she didn’t remember, maybe he could start again, maybe he could be her friend - things would be different if only he could talk to her again. He’d never, ever, ever hurt her, never frighten her with talk about Dark Magic and Death Eaters - he’d find some way that she approved of to get powerful, he’d sever all his ties with Malfoy and the Dark Lord, if only, _if only_ , she had forgotten how he felt about her.   
  
He directed his footsteps towards the Hospital Wing, thinking that this was the bravest thing he’d ever done, and taking no comfort in the fact.    
  
  
Lily was preparing to leave. She had packed her pyjamas, cards and chocolates in her rucksack. It hadn’t been easy, because half the contents of Honeydukes had been swept onto her bed-side table during her brief stay in the Hospital Wing - there were Whistling Lollipops, Chocolate Frogs, Bertie Botts’ Every Flavour Beans - after getting marmalade and disinfectant, she’d given that box to Margot Holloway, who had been robbed of her sense of taste after a potion explosion during her childhood. Meg had bought her chocolates filled with vodka, rum and Fire whisky - she thought alcohol was medicinal, having been raised on it from the age of three.    
  
“Puts hair on your chest,” she’d said bracingly, when Lily had raised her eyebrows at the chocolates.   
  
“And I want that because…?”   
  
Meg had rolled her eyes. “It’s an expression, Lily! Like ‘No use crying over Spilt Potion’, or ‘Smells like Trouble.’ You should talk to Regulus sometime.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“You should talk to - ,”   
  
“No,” Lily had said. “Before that - right before that - ‘Smells like…?”  
  
“Trouble,” Meg said, mystified at Lily’s sudden agitation. “It’s a wizard expression. From Herpo the Foul and his necklace of severed heads? You know, because you could always smell him coming?”   
  
“I’ve heard it before,” Lily murmured.    
  
“When?”   
  
“I can’t remember.” She ran a hand through her hair, trying to cast her mind back, but the memory had slipped through her fingers, and Meg had started talking about her ancestors, and how they’d been bottle-fed Firewhisky, and they’d all turned out perfectly normal. Lily had been forced to humour her dear friend, because Meg was by no means so sure about the supremacy of her blood as she had been a year ago.   
  
Lily was now sitting on the edge of her newly-made bed, looking out of the window of the Hospital Wing, at Hagrid’s hut, with its happily smoking chimney. She felt at once hollow and tender, as though her insides had been scooped out with some kind of blunt object, and were freely bleeding all over her school uniform. She had most of her memories back now - there were a few gaps; she’d found that she couldn’t remember Bellatrix very clearly, but Meg had assured her that this was probably for the best.   
  
She also didn’t remember how she’d got into the tunnels where Malfoy had attacked her. She supposed she had heard Narcissa screaming and followed the sound, to find Malfoy and Snape… doing what? She couldn’t remember. They must have been arguing, and she’d got caught in the cross-fire, because Severus had put Malfoy under the Cruciatus Curse right afterwards.   
  
Lily still shuddered at this memory. It was imprinted vividly in her mind. She’d seen how full of hatred her beloved friend was, and she would never forget it.   
  
And the worst part of it was, she had nobody to blame but herself. He had never so much as given her the impression that he was anything other than a sadistic Death Eater. What was it he had said to her? ‘It’s not my fault if you expend all of that formidable intelligence on fooling yourself’.   
  
She had arranged to meet Potter that evening: they were going for a drink in Hogsmeade, which was apparently the special privilege of House Quidditch Captains. Lily felt guilty for doing this, fearing that she was leading him on, but he had been so contrite and down-right masochistic earlier that day; she wanted to set his mind at ease, and he’d sworn that it would just be a friendly drink:   
  
“No funny business, no flirting, just alcohol,” he’d promised, grinning in that disarming way he had. “We can drink in total silence, if you want.”  
  
She wasn’t sure why she’d agreed; she only knew that the sight of Malfoy being tortured needed to be driven out of her mind - it had confirmed all her worst fears about Severus, and there was no better way of distancing herself from him than befriending his worst enemy.   
  
It was wrong, yes: but she felt _entitled_ to be wrong. In the past year, she’d been called a mud blood, battered with cauldrons and had her memory wiped clear - she wanted to do something _easy_ for once.   
  
There was a tap at the Hospital Wing door, and for a moment, she thought it was Potter, come to collect her for the Hogsmeade trip, but then, with an icy prickle, she recognized Severus. Still, she didn’t look away: she gazed at him with cold expectation.  
  
He looked very uncomfortable. He was clutching his arm, as though it was wounded, and flushing a dull red - the sight stirred something in Lily’s memory, but it collapsed back into the waters of forgetfulness as soon as it had broken the surface.      
  
“Have you got all your memories back now?” Severus asked abruptly, without any preliminary niceties. He looked fierce and unhappy and stared resolutely at the floor, just as James Potter had done. He, however, didn’t look anywhere near so contrite - which Lily found infuriating, considering what he’d done to Malfoy.     
  
“Pretty much,” she answered coldly, busying herself with the last of her packing.    
  
Severus Snape looked up at her. “Oh,” he said. “OK. Um… do you…” She could tell that he was getting angry with himself, because there was a dull flush in his sallow cheeks, and he was twisting his fingers savagely. “Do you remember what happened the night Malfoy hexed you?”   
  
Lily stared at him. How could he ask her that? She could still see Malfoy writhing in the soot and skeletons, still hear his screams building past the point of endurance in the echoing tunnels, as Snape stood with his wand poised over him, watching him with that hungry, pitiless look.  
  
“Of course I do,” she said, her mouth twisted with disgust.  
  
“Um… so…” Snape seemed to be losing the battle with his voice - he couldn’t make it steady. “How much do you want to talk about that?” he finished quickly, looking at the floor.   
  
“As little as possible?” she suggested, with brittle brightness.    
  
Snape was staring at her. He had stopped twisting his fingers, and now he was white and motionless. Lily hoped this was remorse.   
  
“Look, I haven’t told anyone,” she said quietly. “Just make sure it never happens again, OK?”   
  
They were interrupted by James Potter tapping at the Hospital Wing door. Lily was relieved at the interruption, but wished it could have been somebody else who interrupted them. There was a prickly silence in the Hospital Wing, which Potter seemed blissfully unaware of, as he stepped into the room. He was grinning in a bemused, happy kind of way, and hardly seemed to notice Severus.   
  
“Are you ready?” he asked.   
  
“Yeah,” Lily said awkwardly, glancing at Snape, who was still white and staring. She grabbed her rucksack, but Potter lifted it off her shoulders and carried it himself, still grinning. “It’ll be great,” he said, “the Weird Sisters are playing an acoustic gig in The Three Broomsticks. My dad knows the bassist. We‘ll be able to go back-stage and talk to them.”   
  
Lily made noises of polite interest and followed him from the room. She couldn’t look back at Severus. He hated James so much that he would look upon this as the ultimate betrayal - but he was angry and cruel, and she had to stop caring for him, however much it hurt.


	31. Splintered

Blackness for a long time, and a kind of hot pounding in his head. He supposed he must have been walking through the castle corridors, because the next time he became aware of his surroundings, he was floors away from the Hospital Wing, staring out of the window of the Second Floor Corridor, beside the Gryffindor Portrait Hole.   
  
The window-pane was flecked with rain-drops, but the sunlight was blazing through them, creating brilliant sparkles that seared themselves into his eyes. The glass looked splintered, as though it had been fractured into thousands of little slivers that were only staying together because they hadn’t realized yet that they were broken.    
  
That was how Severus felt. When he realized that he was broken, it was going to hurt, but, right now, in the painful white glare of the windows, he only knew he was hot and he wanted to be someplace dark.   
  
Auto-pilot took over again, and then he found himself in the dungeon classroom he used for studying. There was a dull, throbbing pain in his knuckles, and he noticed, as though he was standing outside himself, that his fists were clenched and bleeding.   
  
Had he broken the window? Hadn’t he just been imagining that the window was broken? And why, if he was going to break something, would he use his fists like a common muggle? Like his dad. Tobias Snape was always using his fists to open everything. It didn't matter that it was ineffective, because it made a point.   
  
In that moment of confusion, he suddenly heard Narcissa’s voice purring: “No matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, you can’t empty your veins of that muggle blood. There’s only one way to do that.”   
  
Was that what he’d been trying to do? Bleed out the muggle in him? It was the kind of solution Bellatrix would think of.   
  
It was funny, but he seemed to remember a spell for drawing corrupted blood out of a person, but he couldn’t remember where he’d read it. His thoughts were creeping sluggishly around his skull, like scattered fish in a vast, lifeless ocean, and, all the time, his half-muggle blood was trickling down his arms as he held his still-clenched fists before his eyes. Why couldn’t he unclench them?    
  
They were holding something, he realized; something they obviously didn’t want to let go of.   
  
Severus felt a little of his old frustration creeping back into him. They were _his_ hands, after all, and he could open them if he wanted to.   
  
Still, it took a few more moments of concentration, and there were a few more trickles of blood winding down his forearms like black snakes, before he was looking at the object in his open palm.   
  
It looked like a fancy quill – one of the ones made of Hippogriff feathers, except that this one didn’t have a gold nib. With another rush of dizzy shock, he realized that the tip of the quill was deeply embedded in his palm. He pulled it out, still feeling nothing except heat and confusion.  
  
Perhaps it was the Cruciatus Curse, he thought suddenly: that was supposed to rob you of your ability to feel pain. Torturing Malfoy must have made him numb. There was something very appealing about the idea of being invulnerable: his imagination had always been enthralled by it, ever since he’d first been hit by his father and thought: if muggles were so inferior, then this shouldn’t _hurt_. If they were the idiot cousins of wizards, then their fists should just bounce off us, as if we were made of metal.   
  
But no, there was going to be pain, he was sure of it: he could feel it looming over him like a dark, threatening cloud. It was just waiting until he was good and lucid.   
  
He looked back at the giant feather, and wondered where he’d got it from. It had been squashed flat by his grip, but Severus couldn’t have made out its colour anyway, because it was dirty and matted and covered in what looked like congealed blood. It must have come from the Griffin in Abraxas Malfoy’s oubliette.  
  
And then he realized several things at once:  
  
One was that he had a way out of the castle that Dumbledore didn’t know about, and the other was that Lily was going out with James Potter.   
  
And there it was, as there always was when Severus blacked out from excessive anger, or hatred, or jealousy: a plan ready-formed in his mind: a way of getting his life back, a way of making his tormentors suffer. And the feather was the key.    
  
He needed to get rid of Potter. No more stupid schemes to get him expelled or humiliate him. Potter had to disappear from Severus’ world forever.   
  
_But he’s better than me_ , Severus thought, with a twisting pain in his stomach. _He always wins._   
  
No, he was not better. He was just lucky. The teachers had him wrapped up in cotton wool, and would put you in detention if you even looked at him funny. And everybody was willing to let him copy their homework, because he was the Quidditch Captain, and nobody dared to jinx him, because he had rich, important, fawning parents who thought he could do no wrong. His head was puffed up to such a degree that he wouldn’t even notice if he was beaten. He was too arrogant to feel defeat.   
  
But Dumbledore was the main problem. Potter was Dumbledore’s favourite, and there was no getting to Potter while Dumbledore was around.     
  
But the Dark Lord could do it. The Dark Lord was the only one who could beat Dumbledore: because, much as Severus hated the old fool, he was prepared to admit that he was a powerful wizard. He was just an extremely bad judge of character.   
  
Severus needed to get into the Dark Lord’s good books. And what the Dark Lord wanted more than anything else was Caladrius.     
  
And now Severus had a ready-made way to get Caladrius out of the castle. If he could lure the Divination teacher into Abraxas Malfoy’s tunnels, he would not be able to protect himself, because nobody but Severus (and Malfoy and Lily) knew the secret of using magic inside the dampening field.    
  
Dumbledore would have all kinds of protective spells in place to ensure that nobody could be taken outside the borders of the castle grounds against their will. But he didn’t know about the oubliette, and how could he protect a place he’d never seen? It was only visible to people with a guilty conscience.   
  
The river in Malfoy’s oubliette flowed outside the castle grounds. And, from there, they could Apparate to London. Severus had passed his Apparition test earlier in the month (with admirable concentration, considering that Potter had been taunting him the whole time: “I always assumed you’d be good at Appraition, Snivellus, because nobody knows you’re there at the best of times,” “Careful not to splinch yourself, Snivellus, we don’t want you leaving that greasy hair behind – oh, and I know it must be hard to keep track of that gigantic nose, but try to take it with you, or Padfoot here might start using it as a pool cue”)    
  
Feeling was starting to creep back into his limbs now – tentatively at first, with a few prickles of pain in his hands, and then devastatingly, as he remembered Lily and Potter in the Hospital Wing – Potter’s dazed, triumphant, despicable grin, as he lifted Lily’s bag off her shoulders, and boasted about his stupid father, and his stupid father’s moronic friends.   
  
Snape’s vision blurred with hatred, and he had to steady himself against the damp stone walls of the dungeon, smearing them with blood as he did so. He folded his hands over his stomach instead, giving the dizziness full rein. Jealousy was tearing at his entrails like a ravenous wolf – it was real, physical pain, and he felt that if he could just protect himself, maybe conjure a Shield Charm or an Impediment Jinx, he could fend it off somehow.   
  
Then the memory of Lily’s reproachful awkwardness descended on him like cold water.  
  
She made him feel as though he’d taken advantage of her. And that was not a nice thing to feel, when you loved someone, especially when you wanted them enough to take advantage of them but had tried with every fibre of your being not to. He had almost killed himself with not taking advantage of her. What did she want?   
  
Unfortunately, his mind could supply a ready answer to that question, in the shape of the word he hated more than any other: Potter.   
  
It was all Potter’s doing, he told himself. Potter had got to her, turned her against him, swayed her with all that arrogant talk about the Weird Sisters and the special privileges of Quidditch Captains. She’d been vulnerable without her memories – suggestible. And everyone in the school thought Potter was so perfect, so _cool_.   
  
_He made her say the things she said to me_ , Snape thought desperately. _It doesn’t mean…_ But he couldn’t even finish the thought.   
  
He focused instead upon his hatred, because he could usually deal with that. It had never been like this, though. He’d never had to imagine what Potter might be doing with Lily – draped and drooling over her shoulder, like some kind of lecherous parrot.   
  
He buried his face in his hands, trying to block out the horrible images that kept occurring to him. The calm of his Occlumency state seemed worlds away. He couldn’t stop imagining Potter’s clammy, fumbling hands on her body, slipping the straps of her dress off her shoulders…   
  
_Stop it_ , he told himself.   
  
And they would be out tonight, drinking together. Would she tell Potter how he felt about her? Would they spend their evening laughing at him?    
  
 _Stop it, stop it_.   
  
But even these thoughts were better than the idea that maybe Potter had nothing to do with it. Maybe Lily just didn’t want him. Maybe he made her skin crawl.   
  
Jealousy was his comfort; that was how bad things had got.  
  
He pushed his forehead against the cold stone wall, wondering why he had ended up here, of all places. The only place he’d ever been happy. The only place where his demons had been put to sleep for a while. Because they’d always been there, he realized – in the library, when he and Lily had shared chocolate frogs and whispered about Madam Pince’s distinctive, musty odour – she smelled like she slept between the pages of old books - in their little basin of shade beside the river in Spinner’s End – even on Platform Nine and Three Quarters, when she’d touched his shoulder, and it had felt as though she’d reached right through his bones and into his chest, picked up his heart, dusted it off, and put it back again, good as new. Better than new. When had he ever felt a tender touch, even as a child? He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t shrunk from physical contact, so deeply was the memory of his father’s violence and his mother’s bitterness imprinted in his heart.      
  
But his demons had still been there, even on the steam-shrouded platform. His stomach had still tightened when Lily had walked past Potter, there had still been that cold certainty that he didn’t deserve her, and he never would.    
  
But not when she’d kissed him in this classroom. Not when she’d pressed her body to his, and it had been hot and soft and ginger-bread-scented.    
  
These thoughts were twisting into Snape’s stomach like a corkscrew, and he knew that he had to get out. He couldn’t be here anymore.    
  
He walked back through the dungeon corridors, retracing the route he must have taken on his way here. It was easy enough to spot, because he had left a trail of destruction behind him. Doors were hanging off their frames, torch-brackets had been torn out of their sockets in the walls, and there was blood from his fists on the wet, stone walls. It made his knuckles ache at the sight.   
  
He was going to be in so much trouble. Still, at least he had used his hands: magic could be traced, using the Priori Incantatem spell, but violence was just violence. It was there and then it was gone. There was no record of it, except in the bruises you inflicted. And, as he knew only too well, in the minds of impressionable people who had to watch.   
  
No, his demons had not disappeared in any of those happy memories, he thought bitterly, trying to stay rational, trying to keep his mind from dwelling on Potter’s stupid, triumphant, disgusting grin, and Lily’s coldness.    
  
They hadn’t been gone. He’d just forgotten about them. The world had still been unfair back then, he just hadn’t minded. Happiness was the same as forgetfulness, and forgetfulness was the same as ignorance (Snape’s thoughts were racing now, as though they wanted to make up for lost time). Therefore, he didn’t want to be happy, because happiness was just a nice name for stupidity. He felt sick that he had been taken in by it. He must have looked so stupid, mumbling incoherently to her, pleading with her.   
  
_Stop it_.   
  
He looked again at the feather that had found its way so mysteriously into the palm of his hand.     
  
And he suddenly remembered where he’d read about the Charm for drawing out corrupted blood. It had been one of Lily’s books on Healing Magic – a spell for Charming out poison. You trapped the poisoned blood in an arm, using a modified Summoning Charm, so that it didn’t infect the rest of the body, and then you opened a vein. Any vein would do; the blood would be running to you, like a dog running after a stick. Severus had been struck by that idea – imagine having the ability to summon someone’s blood right out of their veins!   
  
He had frequently visualized using the Charm on Potter.  
  
That was where Dumbledore stumbled, Severus thought: banning books on Dark Magic was all very well, but any magic could be Dark Magic if you had dark intentions, even Healing Magic, which was supposed to be the ultimate antithesis: the Light and Frothy Art, as it was known in the Slytherin Common-room.   
  
Lily had said that Healing Magic couldn’t be misused, because it was fuelled by sympathy and trust. You had to care that your patient recovered, in order for any Healing Magic to work.   
  
But Severus knew how to fool people. His studies in Mind Magic had taught him how to mask his real feelings, even substitute false feelings, to fool a Legilimens. And, if he could fool people, why couldn’t he fool spells? They didn’t think as creatively as people. At any rate, they didn’t think as creatively as _him_.      
  
The patient needed to drink a Blood-Renewing potion right after the blood-letting, of course, because losing that much blood was extremely dangerous. But Severus had never paid much attention to the dreary, recuperative measures that followed spectacular spells. He knew that magic was all about balance, that you couldn’t take without giving, in some important way, but he had always thought that, if you did enough for magic, it would wind up doing something for you.  
  
You were giving by expanding the limits of what magic could do, by keeping ancient spells in circulation – Dark Magic was always in danger of being forgotten, because it was solitary and illegal. Surely, then, the practise of Dark Magic was mutually beneficial, for the magic and for the wizard. Even killing, if viewed from a certain angle, was resurrecting something else.   
  
And, if it was in the interests of magic, if it kept magic alive, if it stopped magic from being put to ignominious uses, like powering self-stirring cauldrons or causing a bunch of flowers to burst out of the end of your wand, then how could it be wrong? How could it be bad?   
  
Severus had always thought that there was a lot of frivolity in the wizarding world: wackiness, almost. So much of the magic you saw from day to day was loud bangs and showing off: fountains of wine pouring from your wand, Quidditch rosettes that screamed the names of your team’s players at you (including, in some cases, the substitutes, the manager, the club’s caretaker, and his dog).  
  
You would never have believed, when you looked at those trick wands that turned into canaries and pecked at you until you apologized, that magic was a noble science that was helping to lift wizardkind out of the dust.    
  
If people like Potter had their way, the wackiness would be in the ascendant all the time, and magic would be something that kept your broomstick in the air and made you sick on demand so that you could get out of Potions, and nothing more.    
  
Severus hated it. Magic wasn’t charming, or delightful, or eccentric; it was dramatic, formidable and beautiful.   
  
This was one of the reasons he’d fallen in love with Lily – because magic was so pure in her. It was sheer, undiluted feeling. Oh, she liked frivolous little spells, too – she enjoyed the Rictusempra Charm, which induced a pleasant tickling sensation (Severus felt a painful jolt in his stomach, as he remembered putting this Charm on her while they were in the library, watching her strained self-control as she tried not to laugh. She would always breathe very deeply and purse her lips, to try and keep the laughter from overwhelming her. He had watched her hungrily, thrilling in her pleasure, waiting with baited breath for the moment when she would lose control. She always did. It had been, until that night when she’d taken the Rosura potion, the most exciting thing he’d ever felt. And then they were always chased from the library by Madam Pince’s magically magnified yells, Lily still laughing, and Severus would pretend to be very disappointed in her, perhaps calling her a squealing Hufflepuff or a Cornish pixie. He had never meant her to take it seriously).   
  
She also loved mood potions, which caused your hair to turn a different colour, depending on how you were feeling. She had taken this potion one Christmas, Severus remembered, and all day, without the merest hint of an under-tone, her hair had been a pure, joyous gold, like fields of corn, or the Quidditch Cup.   
  
(Severus still had dreams in which he was flying after the Quidditch Cup on a broomstick, trying to catch up to it, and he wondered whether this was an expression of his increasingly desperate attempts to get Lily. Sometimes, when the dream got very dark, Potter was racing after the Cup too, and he could always out-fly Severus, even in the dream-world. Snape had a vivid imagination, but it was fatalistic – it always betrayed him: it fixed on the worst imaginable possibilities, and then, because it was so powerful, it made them come true).   
  
Dumbledore (in one of the detention-lectures that he frequently put Severus into) had once said that reality is what you expect, not what there is. And Snape's imagination was proving him right, which was just typical of its deliberately unhelpful attitude.   
  
But Lily’s magic had been too strong for the mood potion. Her feelings were not the kind that could be reduced to simple colours. Somehow, without trying, she had taken the basic premise of the mood potion and improved upon it: her hair grew longer, and started to swirl about her, as though she were underwater. When she was reading, it would rearrange itself into a different style of its own accord and, in moments of particularly intense happiness, it sparked and crackled with ecstasy, as though it were burning with invisible fire.    
  
That was the point: whenever she performed frivolous magic, she surpassed it, disgraced it. Lily’s magic was real magic – it was made for better things than scouring dishes, or boiling potatoes. It was the least menial magic he had ever seen – in fact, it was majestic, imperious. It was like Bella, only beautiful.   
  
Severus forced his mind away from these digressions, because they were stinging like a swarm of wasps – stings that he seemed to be having an allergic reaction to, because they were squeezing all the air out of his lungs and making his skin burn.  
  
Everything was lost now – or would be if he didn’t get Caladrius.    
  
He tried to think his way back to his original point, before his brain had started enthusing about Lily. Oh, yes.   
  
The Dark Lord, even if he didn’t know it, was honouring magic – he was expanding its horizons, reminding people that it was an elemental force, not a source of loud bangs and cheap tricks. Real wizards did not pull rabbits out of hats – that was one of the first things his mother had ever told him about magic. It had seemed cryptic at the time, but now he understood it. Magic was being degraded, its grace and dignity forgotten.   
  
He would explain to Lily, someday, that he’d done it for her, and for magic. Surely even killing could be honourable, if it was for love and magic.


	32. Torn

Narcissa found Severus reading on the bed in his dormitory. It was deserted except for Avery, who was practising his snarly face in front of a mirror. He could achieve a good effect with those long, pointed teeth and bulging eyes – and, with his school tie fastened around his head, he looked mad as well as ferocious. Narcissa had a lot of respect for ugliness if it was impressive. Still, she needed to talk to Severus. She gave Avery a meaningful look and he slouched off.    
  
“Am I disturbing you?” she asked Severus tentatively.   
  
“Always,” Snape replied, closing his book with a snap. “What do you want?”   
  
“I thought you and I might spend some time together,” she murmured, lowering her eyes to the floor – not out of shyness, but to display the full, serpentine lengths of her eyelashes to their greatest advantage. “I can arrange for my dormitory to be empty at, say, midnight tonight.”   
  
Snape, who was by nature a suspicious creature, said: “Where are the rest of the girls in your dormitory going to sleep?”   
  
“Oh, they’ll sleep in the commonroom if I ask them to.”   
  
“Ask them to, or pay them to?” he asked shrewdly.   
  
“Well, I’ll be asking some and paying others,” Narcissa replied.    
  
“Paying the ones who don’t need the money, and asking the ones who do?”   
  
Narcissa did her best to look delighted. “What a wonderful grasp of wizard economics you have. Unusual, for a - ,” she faltered.   
  
“A repugnant little half-blood?” Snape asked smoothly.  
  
Narcissa smiled her disarming, wrinkle-less smile. “You know I was only being… colourful.”   
  
Snape decided not to rise to the bait. He wasn’t going to let her make him angry again. She wasn’t worth it.  
  
With the cold, unflinching certainty with which he did everything these days, he had decided that he was going to sleep with Narcissa. He wanted to get back at Lily: he wanted her to know what it felt like to see an old friend with a mortal enemy. And he wanted to get her attention, because she was looking at the floor every time she passed him in the corridors, in a way that made him sick to his stomach. He wouldn’t care if she shouted or sneered, he wouldn’t care if the first words out of her mouth were: ‘Crawl into a hole and die, Snivellus’, if she would just look at him.  
  
He felt like the monsters under her bed, that would cease to exist if she just ignored them.    
  
Anyway, he felt reckless: he was kind of curious to see how bad things could get. How much could he get Lily to hate him? How angry could he make Malfoy? He’d felt this once before, in Spinner’s End, getting between his father and mother in a fight, and daring him, just daring him, to hit him again, to keep on hitting him, yelling that he was only twelve and only a gutless, stinking coward would be afraid of hitting a twelve year-old. What was he worried about, Severus had roared, breaking his fist?  
  
Gutless was exactly how he felt. He was completely hollow. In a few days, his insides had gone from aching to echoing. But he liked it: there was something liberating in seeing your worst nightmares come true. He felt completely in control of things now. You could have stubbed out a cigarette on his palm, and he wouldn’t have flinched.     
  
But this didn’t mean he wouldn’t be tormenting Narcissa: he hadn’t forgotten what she’d said to him in her dormitory: he hadn’t forgotten that it was her stupid screams that had started all this.   
  
Anyway, hollow and spiteful as he felt, he couldn’t stop thinking about the girls in her dormitory, shivering in the common-room all night, being entertained by the gruesome stories of the insomniac Regulus. Nobody deserved to spend a whole night in Regulus’ company.   
  
“I hate to put anyone out of a bed,” he murmured. “The girls in your dormitory could join us, if - ,”    
  
“No,” she said, her voice suddenly steely. But, despite her anger, she was rather impressed at his daring. With a pout, she added: “Anyway, Jen Morgan’s a half-blood.”   
  
“And you think having two half-bloods in your bed might add up to a whole muggle?” Severus asked.   
  
Narcissa didn’t reply. The conversation seemed to be escaping her control, and it was making her irritable and excited in equal measure. “You’re not prejudiced in that respect, then, Severus?”   
  
It was a leading question. The accusation of not being prejudiced was a deadly one in Slytherin House.   
  
“Not in that respect,” Severus said cheerfully, “no. And any man who tells you that he is, is a liar. Lucius Malfoy subscribes to a magazine called ‘Mud-Wrestling Mud-Bloods’.”   
  
“Interesting,” said Narcissa with spiteful brightness, “I wonder if your little friend is in it.”  
  
Snape’s vision blurred momentarily, but he pulled himself back from the brink. It was easier than he’d expected. Narcissa knew everything, of course: she had seen him kissing Lily in the oubliette. But he wasn’t going to make the situation worse by getting angry.   
  
If he was careful, he could persuade her that Lily had just been an infatuation: a contemptuous attraction, like the one he had until so recently felt for Narcissa. She would believe it because she wanted to, and because she was always the first to under-estimate people.   
  
Anyway, what did pure-bloods know about love? To them, love was a family tree full of maniacs and a bigger castle.     
  
When he could see again, he realized that Narcissa was leaning against one of the pillars of the four-poster bed opposite, watching him with her usual brand of lazy curiosity – as though she were mentally running through a list of poisons, and deciding which one would produce the most lingering and interesting death.   
  
Snape felt a wild, unreasonable urge to grab her by the waist again, tear that immaculate school shirt and rake his nails across her belly, breathing in the too-sweet smell of her perfume.      
  
“I tell you what,” he said with contemptuous calm. “I’ll come if you reverse your economic policy.”   
  
“What do you mean?”   
  
“If you pay Jen Morgan, and ask the others.”   
  
She raised her pencil-thin eyebrows sardonically. “You assume it’s the half-blood who’s short of money?”   
  
“She must be,” he said, with a shrug. “The exchange rate’s terrible. Five pounds to every Galleon, did you know that?”      
  
He looked at her immaculate school-uniform, and her dainty, high-heeled shoes. There were gold trimmings on the laces. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he said: “No, of course you didn’t.”  
  
“You’ll have to be careful, Severus,” Narcissa continued. “You don’t want me to go telling the whole common-room that you’re a muggle-lover.”   
  
“And you don’t want me to go telling the common-room that you’re a pure-blood poisoner. The worst I can get is teased. _You’ll_ get arrested.”   
  
Narcissa gave a brief, elegant shrug, and lowered her eyes again, letting the light catch on those long, liquorice lashes.   
  
“Whatever you say,” she murmured. “How much shall I pay her?”   
  
“Ten Galleons.”   
  
Ten Galleons was a trifling sum to Narcissa. She had paid more money for an ice-cream. Still, she didn’t like the thought of Jen Morgan receiving it. Like all pure-blood Slytherins, she had a horror of what the muggles would do with money and power if they ever managed to get any. Still, she wanted Severus. No-one had ever refused her before. She was the prettiest, richest, and least inhibited girl in the school, and a teenage boy – especially an odd, solitary one like Severus – could usually be counted on to notice these things.   
  
Somebody who didn’t want her, who didn’t lie down and let her walk all over him, who didn’t get all flustered and lose the thread of what he was saying when she fluttered her eyelashes, was enticing. Narcissa had always had the best of everything: it would be fun, for once in her life, to flirt with the dregs of wizard society, to experience real _squalor_. As long as nobody found out about it.   
  
And why, _why_ didn’t her perfume work on him? Well, she would find out tonight. She would see if he was more open to questioning with his clothes off.   
  
“Severus,” she murmured. “About tonight. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”   
  
Snape raised his eyebrows. He was looking at her as though she was something small and ugly that he’d found lurking at the bottom of his cauldron.   
  
“I’d be as ashamed as you would, Narcissa,” he said with a twisted smile.    
  
Narcissa sat on the bed beside him and gripped the front of his shirt, the way she had last week, before his insides had been scooped out and replaced with ice. He could feel himself sinking into his Occlumency state at the sight of her. So this was how it was going to be from now on. He was going to spend his life with a succession of shallow, spiteful, simple creatures, who wouldn’t know joy if it bit them on their bony back-sides.     
  
He looked back at her impassively. Close to, she was still flawless. You’d need an electron microscope to spot a flaw on Narcissa’s face (or a Magnification Charm, he thought irritably. He had to stop thinking like a muggle. Wizards most emphatically did not need electron microscopes).    
  
He looked at Narcissa’s matte, white face (she might have been sculpted out of pressed powder – he had a feeling that, if he blew on her, she would dissolve), and felt emptiness spreading through his veins. He felt as numb and desolate as those dead, grey eyes. What with that, and the smell of flowers that she radiated, he had the distinct impression of being at his own funeral.     
  
He had to hurry up and take his revenge on Potter, just so that he could _feel_ something again, even if it was hatred. Anything was better than this.   
  
“See you tonight, then,” Narcissa muttered, and kissed him. Her lips were cold.   
  
Severus watched her go as he would have watched a dog chasing its tail. She was something remote, stupid and slightly contemptible.   
  
The stories in the common-room were mixed: some people said that Evans was going out with Potter, others that she was just stringing him along, and a couple of people fiercely maintained that she was just trying to infiltrate his family, so that she could assassinate them, and replace them with muggles who’d taken Polyjuice Potion, in order to bring down the wizard world from within. Some people said she’d already got Potter’s dad, the Gringotts treasure-seeker, and all the gold in the wizard bank was going to be leaked to the muggles piece by piece. She was already known amongst the more spiteful of Potter’s fan-club as ‘the crimson-haired Jezebel’.   
  
On the whole, Severus found these stories soothing: the wilder the better. It made him feel as though it was all a fantasy. Or, it would have done, if there hadn’t been the odd, bitter grain of truth in them.   
  
She was meeting him at the Three Broomsticks. He knew it, because he’d been watching them. They went walking in the grounds after the taverns closed, and Severus had watched them from the top of the Astronomy Tower, under the increasingly dark clouds.   
  
Once or twice, he’d wondered whether she would be sorry if he jumped.   
  
He was used to jealousy: Lily wasn’t a flirt, but she wasn’t exactly shy, either: and she didn’t seem aware that men might find her attractive – in fact, she was the complete opposite of Narcissa. Where Narcissa’s every move was calculated to stir desire, Lily didn’t even seem aware of desire as a force beyond the feeling you got when you saw a beautiful book on Healing Magic in a shop window. If it was anything bigger, she didn’t have time for it.   
  
Every time Severus had suggested self-centred motives to explain why all the boys in school were so nice to her, she had told him he was just being cynical.   
  
“Better to be cynical than naïve,” he’d replied irritably.   
  
“Is it?” she’d asked cheerfully. “I think it’s probably about the same.”   
  
“You don’t know what they’re like,” he’d persisted, fully aware that he was fighting a losing battle here.    
  
“They’re just people, Sev,” she’d said gently.  
  
“ _Just people_?”   
  
“I mean, what’s the worst they can do to me?”   
  
“Do you really want me to answer that?”   
  
“What with men and women both being people,” she continued, obviously not listening to him, “you’d think we’d be able to talk person to person, rational creature to rational creature, without anyone taking advantage of anyone else.”    
  
“You’re laboring under the delusion that men are rational creatures, are you?”   
  
“Not laboring, no. I’m skipping under it. It’s an incredible weight off your mind.”   
  
“Every weight that gets taken off of your mind is added onto mine,” he’d said morosely, poking at the thread-bare carpet with his shoe.   
  
She’d squeezed his hand affectionately. “That’s why I love you.”   
  
That was always a conversation-killer. Severus would go red, draw his hand away, and spend the next ten minutes berating himself for being stupid.  
  
Unbeknownst to him, Lily was doing exactly the same.     
  
Anyway, he knew all about jealousy. It was a strange feeling: it bypassed your brain and went straight to your guts. Sometimes, you had no memory of what had caused the sick, writhing, aching sensation in your stomach, but you had to suffer it anyway. If you could find the sting, you might be able to pull it out, but jealousy hid from your mind and trampled on your intestines. It felt as though your insides had been shaken up – you felt hot and sick and brimming over with venom and bile, and, most of the time, you didn’t even know why. If she brushed past someone in a corridor, if she shook hands with somebody for too long, if she smiled at someone you hadn’t seen her talking to before.     
  
And it was so much worse when it was Potter. Anybody else’s hands on her would be criminal, Potter’s hands on her were profane.   
  
But so far (and Snape was pessimistic enough to count his blessings while he still could) there had been no profanity to speak of.   
  
They didn’t even hold hands. This, combined with the fact that Severus knew Potter, and knew he’d be boasting to the entire school from the top of a Goal-hoop with a magical megaphone if he really was going out with Lily, made Severus hope that it was just a friendship, for now.    
  
It was a wretched, miserable hope; it was thin, uncomfortable comfort, but it would have to do.     
  
  
Narcissa went back to her dormitory, casting a spiteful look at Jen Morgan, who was brushing her hair in front of the mirrors on top of Narcissa’s dressing table.   
  
“Come away from there, Jen, darling” she said, in her high, artificial voice, “you’ll only depress yourself.”   
  
Jen coloured a little, but said nothing. She might have done, once, but six years of being a half-blood in Slytherin House had sapped her spirit. She gave Narcissa a civil little smile and made herself scarce.   
  
Narcissa spent a few moments lingering in front of her mirrors. They had not just been arranged to display her face from every flattering angle: she could see each corner of the room when she sat in front of these mirrors: they were arranged for surveillance as much as vanity.   
  
Then she opened the left hand drawer of her desk and slipped out a small object, wrapped in rustling blue silk.   
  
She pulled the silk back, to reveal an oval picture frame, just large enough to nestle snugly in the palm of her hand. It had been designed only to fit the hand of a true daughter of the House of Black. Narcissa could remember the day her hand was big enough to hold it, concealed, the way her ancestors had done; she had also endured painful growth-impeding spells so that her hand would grow no larger, but it had been worth it to inherit the secrets she was now nursing lovingly in her palm.  
  
The frame was black and ornate: it was made out of sculpted black marble, threaded with glittering veins of quartz. At the top, carved into the stone, was the Black Coat of Arms and, beneath that, the family motto: Toujours Purs.   
  
The frame contained a portrait of a plain woman with inky, blue-black hair and rather bulbous eyes, dressed in a rustling, iridescent gown of green silk. It was tight and unforgiving, just like the woman – the rustly silk was cinched in at the waist by a black and green corset, which shimmered like peacock feathers. She had long black gloves, and was staring through her long eyelashes at Narcissa – the haughty Black stare that never failed to put people in their place.    
  
This was Narcissa’s paternal grandmother, Claudia Black – an alchemist, by trade, but out-of-hours, she had been the most devious dark-witch ever to have graced the magical world with her fire, fury and ingenuity.   
  
The problem that magical historians had when dealing with Claudia Black was whether or not to call her a Dark Witch. Her mind had not been entirely dark, her discoveries had not been entirely blood-thirsty. She had invented healing potions, Anaesthesia Charms, and Muggle Repelling spells. She had helped to protect muggles (a detail that Narcissa had initially found difficult to reconcile with her budding adulation towards her grandmother). But she had also devised methods of magical torture that would make even the Dark Lord shudder.  
  
Claudia Black had taught wizards that, while you cannot avoid the ravages of age, you can compartmentalize them. If you can extend yourself into some external object, you can transfer the unwanted parts of yourself into it. And she had a very broad idea of what constituted an 'object'.   
  
She had an incurable magical illness, Stygmalian Fever, but she kept the symptoms in her House Elf, who’d dutifully suffered them, so that Claudia could get on with her work. Because house elves had tougher immune systems than humans, Claudia Black had managed to live a long time, without ageing a day, or suffering any of the horrific symptoms of her disease, until her fifteenth husband had finally succeeded in poisoning her.    
  
Narcissa, like Severus, had a great capacity for accepting things. Nothing could shock her. You learned to shrug off the most horrific details when you lived in Slytherin House, especially in the climate of kindling paranoia that the Dark Lord’s rise to power was creating.   
  
She’d seen her parents curse their own brothers and sisters for disgracing the family name. Her aunt Raptura had been transfigured into a dog, a badly-performed spell that had unfortunately stuck, and she was regularly kicked when she got in the way.   
  
Claudia Black had not spoken to Narcissa at first. She had waited for her young descendent to prove herself. She had no regrets about falling into Narcissa’s hands – the other Black girls were unsuitable. Andromeda had a streak of arrogant independence, and Bellatrix had a streak of insanity: neither were bad qualities, as such, but they needed to be moderated. Narcissa, if only through her incurable laziness, was calm, cautious, guarded, and prudent. She was not intelligent, but she was wise. She knew the way the world worked, and that was the most important thing.   
  
As soon as Claudia had realized Narcissa was poisoning Lucius Malfoy with Amortentia, she’d decided to offer the girl a little advice. Narcissa had listened with misty-eyed love. Her ancestor was a goddess as far as she was concerned.   
  
“What’s on your mind, grand-daughter?” she asked, as Narcissa unwrapped her tenderly.  
  
“The boy I used to poison Malfoy,” she whispered – not because she was afraid of being overheard, but because Claudia Black’s presence filled her with such awe that she could do nothing but whisper. Whenever she unwrapped her grandmother’s portrait, she felt as though she were in a cathedral or a crypt, some sacred space that made her feel tiny and insignificant – and Narcissa was not accustomed to feeling tiny and insignificant. “The boy I told you about – Severus,”   
  
“Yes?” Caludia asked imperiously.   
  
“I’ve asked him to meet me tonight, in the dormitory. Do you think he’ll turn up?”   
  
“Of course he will turn up,” Claudia purred in her dark, sultry voice. “He is a teenage boy; you are a beautiful girl. You must learn to underestimate men, Narcissa. You can do so quite safely in these matters. And it saves valuable time.”   
  
“What will I do if Lucius finds out?”   
  
“You must ensure that he doesn’t.”   
  
“But Severus is under a Charm that will make him bleed to death if he lies to another Death Eater.”   
  
“Really?” Claudia asked, her eyes shining with interest. “How does that work?”   
  
“It is a Charm of the Dark Lord’s invention,” Narcissa explained impatiently. She adored her clever grandmother, but she sometimes had a tendency to linger excessively on scholarly details. “I suppose it works along the same lines as Veritaserum.”   
  
“But Veritaserum gives the victim no choice: this Charm allows them to make the mistake of lying.” She smiled in a grim, self-satisfied way. “That is just like Tom Riddle. He always did want people to learn the hard way.”   
  
Narcissa stared at her grandmother. “You knew the Dark Lord?”   
  
“Of course. He was just starting out at Hogwarts when I left. He could charm secrets out of you like snakes. I always knew he’d go far: I just didn’t know in which direction.”   
  
Narcissa tried to think her way back to the point. She had a vague idea that this was a dangerous topic of conversation.   
  
“Are you sure I should meet Severus tonight?” she asked.    
  
She remembered Malfoy in the oubliette – his wild, unshaven face, with the worshipful bones at his feet – and felt a twinge of regret. He had been so powerful, ruthless and passionate in the dungeons. When Severus had put the Cruciatus Curse on him, she remembered feeling like there was a hand at her throat, throttling her.   
  
“Lucius is so much more respectable,” she murmured, thinking out loud (she would never have done this with anyone but her grandmother). “He’s a pure-blood…”   
  
“Immaterial,” said Claudia Black. “This boy, Severus, will be powerful: Malfoy will only ever be stolid and rich. You need to spot potential in your men, Narcissa. Malfoy is derivative; Snape is wildly original. He found a way into Abraxas Malfoy’s tunnels, tamed a Griffin and put Malfoy under the Cruciatus Curse.”   
  
“The mudblood probably helped him,” Narcissa murmured resentfully. “And, anyway, Severus doesn’t want me.”   
  
“Of course he does,” Claudia replied, “an imaginative man like that can want anyone.” Narcissa was so in awe of her grandmother that she didn’t really spot the insult there.    
  
“You can _learn_ things from him, Narcissa,” Claudia Black went on. “Doubtless, you will have to marry Malfoy, but the women of our family have always taken brilliant and powerful lovers. Talent does not seem to go hand in hand with respectability, as the half-blood Tom Riddle proves.”    
  
Narcissa gasped. Her grandmother said such dangerous things sometimes. “Talent is not everything,” she murmured sulkily.   
  
“What else is there?” Claudia remarked, raising one of her blue-black eyebrows. “There is a war coming, Narcissa: I can smell it. You need to build relationships with Generals, not foot-soldiers.”   
  
“Malfoy is _not_ a foot-soldier,” she protested.    
  
“And Snape refused your advances the first time, didn’t he?” Claudia asked, with the air of someone who has found an unassailable argument in her favour. “Aren’t you curious as to why?”   
  
Narcissa pouted. She _did_ want to experiment with Snape: he was like the Dark Lord, pleasures of the flesh didn’t seem to influence him. If she wanted to find a place in the Dark Lord’s regime, she was going to have to study men like this. Her Hemlock and vanilla perfume seemed wildly inadequate in this new and frightening world.   
  
And he didn’t need her approval. Narcissa was always mesmerized by independence, in a horrified, disgusted kind of way.   
  
“If you think it is wise,” she said eventually.   
  
“Of course it is wise. The Black Family name is going to survive this war, my girl, as it has survived every other war in history. The trick lies in picking the winning side.”


	33. The Green-eyed Monster

Severus had never liked the Transfiguration classroom. Along one side of the room was a wall of French windows that reached from ceiling to floor, and McGonagall never thought to draw the curtains. She liked to be able to see her students. Late afternoon sunlight was pouring into the room, bouncing off the white-washed walls and lacerating Snape’s eyes. He hated sunlight: it made everything plain and harsh and conspicuous. Ugliness was twice as ugly in the sunlight, and Severus found it hard enough to see beauty in people at the best of times.   
  
He liked subtleties, and anonymity, and comfort – he liked rich, multi-toned, velvet darkness, that bristled with possibilities, but never gave them up. He liked a level of light that made him seem attractively mysterious, rather than hook-nosed and greasy.   
  
During these lessons, he tended to sit in the seats farthest from the windows, squirming in the stark, glaring daylight, and feeling hot, uncomfortable and, worst of all, visible.   
  
He sat at the front today, hunched over his work, and wishing himself a million miles away from the laughter and chatter of the classroom. He supposed he would be, tonight, but that didn’t offer much comfort.   
  
He wondered when he would be able to see Lily again. And he wondered what would happen to her, at the mercy of the slobbering, grinning, Quidditch-playing creep – but, then, he reminded himself, she wants to be at his mercy, doesn’t she?   
  
Anyway, he won’t be around for long.  
  
He works fast, though.  
  
Maybe it would be better to have a plan, to get Potter away from Lily, before he went to join the Dark Lord tonight. Some kind of debilitating injury would be good – something that would knock that lecherous gleam out of his eyes – or, better still, just knock out his eyes.    
  
Professor McGonagall came in, swept several paper airplanes out of the air, with a flick of her wand, and stood at the front of the classroom, surveying them with a look of weary exasperation. Severus knew the feeling.   
  
“Now, today,” she said crisply, “I had thought to set you all a challenge worthy of your comparatively advanced years, but since Potter has been kind enough to lower my expectations of you, perhaps we should go over elementary Transfiguration again.”   
  
The class giggled, and Potter spread his hands innocently. He didn’t seem to be in his usual attention-seeking mood, though. Once upon a time, he would have exclaimed that he could have breezed through the most advanced of McGonagall’s lessons with both hands tied behind his back, but today he just lowered his eyes and muttered an apology.   
  
The class seemed quite sorry to be deprived of a show. They were still gazing at Potter expectantly when McGonagall started talking.   
  
“Well, then,” she said. “Today, we will be reversing animal Transfigurations. Now, undoing Transfiguration is a great deal more complicated than performing it. In order to unpick somebody else’s spell, you need to understand how they performed it in the first place, and also what, if anything, can be done about it. Now, I will be handing out a random sample of tea-cups that my Fifth-year class transfigured from Door-mice yesterday. Some have been transfigured with greater, or lesser, skill.”   
  
She wasn’t joking. Some of the tea-cups were still furry, and a few of them had tails.   
  
“Your task will be to turn these tea-cups back into door-mice,” she continued. “And you may find the poorly-transfigured ones present more of a challenge that the perfect tea-cups. Sloppy magic is always more difficult to undo, which is why the finest magical minds of their generation have traditionally worked in schools. Miss Evans, will you hand these out, please?”   
  
Severus felt a jolt in his stomach, as Lily walked up to the front of the class, and took the box of tea-cups from Professor McGonagall. The sunlight did wonderful things to some people, of course. Lily was rendered luminous by it. Her hair was pulled back into a pony-tail, but it was still falling over her shoulders in soft, jewel-bright folds. Her cheeks were a tender pink, and Severus thought, with a rush of bitterness, about her appearance under the Rosura potion. He couldn’t believe it had only been a week ago. He couldn’t believe he’d been stupid enough to be honest with her.    
  
He wondered if this would be the last time he’d see her, at least for a while. Lily would be the only reason for coming back to Hogwarts, and she was spending more and more of her time with Potter, presumably unaware that he was looking at her the way a starving man would look at a large, juicy steak - wide-eyed and drooling with greed and gratitude.   
  
He was giving her that look right now, as she walked between the rows of desks, handing out tea-cups. When she walked past him, he turned around in his seat to watch her, until Sirius Black gave a huge, fake cough that sounded like: “Staring!” and kicked him under the table.   
  
Potter turned back to face the front of the classroom, his face red, and his gaze unfocused. Snape visualized smashing every tea-cup in the room onto his slimy, over-sized head.    
  
When Lily handed Severus his tea-cup, she didn’t look at him. He hadn’t really expected her to, but it was still depressing.   
  
He’d got a perfectly transfigured cup. There was at least one person who could manage a simple Transfiguration in the Fifth Year. He was betting it wasn’t Narcissa or Regulus. It was white china, with blue willow-patterns, and there was a little yellow post-it note stuck to the side. Snape pulled it off, only to get it stuck to his fingers. It must have been bewitched with a strong Adhesive Charm.   
  
While trying to shake it off, a wonderful possibility occurred to him.     
  
Maybe she was trying to talk to him. Maybe _she_ had stuck this note to his tea-cup, because she was too shy to talk to him openly. His heart hammering, Severus unfolded the sticky paper, but there was nothing on it.   
  
Of course not. She was clever. She wouldn’t write him a message that just anyone could read. She would have concealed it somehow – maybe used invisible ink, or bewitched the message so that it would only be revealed when somebody spoke a password.   
  
He pulled out his wand, and tapped the paper, casting a non-verbal Revelio spell. Nothing happened. Stubbornly, he fished a Revealer out of his pencil case, and rubbed it across the paper. Still nothing.   
  
Passwords, he thought, trying desperately to fight off the thickening gloom that was descending on him. He couldn’t think properly when he got depressed.  
  
Well, it wouldn’t be ‘mudblood’, that was for sure. What was important to her? Her doe Patronus? Her books on Healing Magic? That stupid magical ethics club?   
  
Roger Davies? a malicious little voice in his head suggested. James Potter?  
  
And there it was again – that dark cloud in his peripheral vision; the sense that something dark and fanged and horrible, something straight out of Rosier’s melodramatic stories, was getting ready to pounce on him.   
  
Don’t be such a pessimist, he told himself; she’s trying to talk to you. She’ll forgive you, and then you won’t have to kidnap Caladrius and take him to the Dark Lord. You won’t have to kill Potter – well, not unless he gets on your nerves again.   
  
No, Lily wouldn’t like that. Potter could keep his over-sized head, if it would make her happy. He could keep his gold, his fan-club, his top-of-the-range broomstick, and his Quidditch Cup. What did it matter, if Lily was in his side again?    
  
But there was nothing on the paper.   
  
The sun went behind a cloud and, at the same moment, disappointment hit Severus like a fist in the chest.   
  
It was just a blank sticker. Somebody must have fixed it to their tea-cup when they transfigured it, so that they could remember which one was theirs.  
  
There was a kind of rushing in his ears, as though he were underwater. The sounds of the classroom – the chatter and laughter, the insults and the badly-performed spells – were suddenly muffled, while humiliation and self-disgust rushed to his head and made him dizzy.   
  
Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thought. Why would she want to talk to you? She spends all her time hanging out with your worst enemy – who, incidentally, is top of every class, and a Quidditch hero. And you’re just a greasy-haired misfit who nobody respects. She’s never going to want you.   
  
Down on the sloping lawn, by the edge of the Forbidden Forest, Snape could see Narcissa and Regulus in their Care of Magical Creatures Class. Narcissa had her eyes glued to her pocket mirror, occasionally letting it catch the sunlight, so that she could reflect it into the eyes of Jen Morgan or some other half-blood (muggle-borns were not even worth tormenting, as far as she was concerned. It would make them feel important).   
  
Regulus was twirling his wand between his fingers and muttering to himself – undoubtedly wizard’s proverbs. The rest of the class had cleared a wide circle around him.    
  
And, inside the Transfiguration classroom, Avery was picking his teeth with his wand, and Bella, the most worrying one of all, had succeeded in Transfiguring her tea-cup into a mouse, and was holding it by the tail and twirling it round her head, her eyes wide with mad enjoyment.   
  
And these were the people he was going to spend his life with. They looked as though they had escaped from an extremely up-market mental institution.   
  
At just the wrong moment, Lily made them look much worse. She had been watching Bella’s antics with narrowed eyes and folded arms, until she couldn’t stand it any longer, and Summoned the mouse out of her hand, caught it, and hid it in the breast pocket of her school shirt.   
  
Bella blinked several times, shook Rodolphus by the front of his shirt, demanding to know what he’d done with her mouse, and then got sent out by Professor McGonagall for creating a disruption.   
  
“And what did you do with your tea-cup, Miss Black?”   
  
“I transfigured it!” Bella shouted.   
  
“Into what?” McGonagall asked pointedly. “Air?”   
  
Of course he belonged with these people, Severus thought. He had just imagined that the most amazing girl in the school would be sending him secret letters. He was just as mad as they were – the only difference was, he knew it.     
  
After shooing Bellatrix out of the classroom with an expression of barely-controlled disgust, McGonagall turned to Severus, and peered at him dubiously, as though suspecting him of being an accomplice.    
  
“You look pale, Snape,” she said severely, as if he was doing it on purpose.   
  
Severus felt sweaty and tense. He ran his hand through his hair, looked over at Lily, who was covertly lowering Bella’s mouse out of the window, and thought he might as well see her for the last time now, while he was less than lucid.   
  
“I’m not feeling very well, Professor,” he said. “Can I be excused?”    
  
McGonagall peered at him again. For some reason, the sight of him always seemed to make her angry: she pursed her lips and flared her nostrils for a while, obviously expecting this intimidating treatment to make him lose his nerve and apologize, but when it didn’t, she said: “Very well, Snape. See me to pick up the homework when you are recovered.”   
  
Bellatrix was leaning against the wall in the corridor when he got outside, examining her nails with a look of imperious fury. When McGonagall shut the door, she said: “She really doesn’t like you, does she?”   
  
Snape shrugged. “’Course not. She loves Potter, doesn’t she? Haven’t you ever wondered what goes on in those detentions she puts him in?” He imitated McGonagall’s crispest, sternest voice: “Potter, you have been a very naughty boy.”   
  
Bellatrix barked with laughter and slapped him, hard, across the face. Severus had been hoping she would do this. Pain was the one thing that could be guaranteed to wake him up and bring him back to his senses. He wished Bella had been there to slap him five minutes ago.   
  
This was the world he belonged in – a world of sadistic maniacs and spoilt princesses who seemed to find him irresistible. He could never attract anyone sane – and certainly not someone sweet, happy, pure and tender. He’d better get used to it.    
  
“What’s wrong with you, anyway?” Bella demanded unceremoniously. “Are you sick? Did you transfigure your cup? Did you see who took my mouse?”  
  
Bella was aggressively curious. She treated anything she didn’t know about as a conspiracy against her. She didn’t think people should be allowed to have secrets from her: after all, she’d been given everything else her heart desired, why not other people’s confidences? Who were they to keep secrets from a daughter of the House of Black?   
  
She questioned people fiercely, and it was difficult to answer her, because she never listened to you when you did. This made for extremely repetitive conversations. Sometimes, when Severus felt himself drifting off with boredom, he would make a joke, just so that Bella would slap him, and bring him back down to earth again.    
  
You needed angelic patience to deal with Bella. Rodolphus didn’t have that, but he had tenacious stupidity, which was similar in its effects. He was too slow-witted to resent her cruelty, and too insensitive to feel any pain when she bullied him. He was perfect for her: a pure-blood punching bag.    
  
“Potter took your mouse,” Snape replied smoothly. “And I hope you’re not planning on letting him get away with it.”   
  
“Of course not!” Bella shouted (everything she said was a shout, because she was genetically incapable of lowering her voice – it was a disability that all the members of the House of Black suffered from, except Narcissa).   
  
“If I were you,” Snape said confidentially, leaning close to her, “I’d use the Crotch-kicking Curse on him. It’s a modified version of the Cruciatus Curse. The incantation is Excrucio.” He gave her, for the first time in his life, a genuine smile. “I’m sure you’ll take to it. You’re a natural.”    
  
The Crotch-kicking Curse was not just a clever name. It generated the kind of pain that you felt when you were kicked in the crotch by a pair of heavy, steel-capped, hob-nailed boots. It made your whole world implode with pain. Let Potter try and seduce Lily after that! (or, for that matter, ride a broomstick). It was the most humbling experience a man could possibly suffer.   
  
He might have unleashed a bit of a monster, telling Bella about it, though. Still, as long as Potter got hurt, Snape didn’t mind how many innocent casualties there were. He didn’t even mind being one of them, as long as Potter suffered.    
  
  
Say what you will about Evans Rosier, thought Lily, as she sat at the back of his classroom watching the impressive shadows he cast on the wall, he's a really good teacher.   
  
He told stories about the Dark Arts, replete with ghoulish detail and breathless enthusiasm. He waved his hands around constantly – imitating the disemboweling motion of a European werewolf, or the distinctive, crouching gait of an Erkling. He didn’t just teach the lessons: he performed them. Every dark creature or curse that he mentioned was described in lurid detail, with a great deal of flourishing hand-gestures and dramatic cries.   
  
And the spectacle of a bald man in wizard’s robes and a cowboy hat, permanently radiating blue cigar-smoke, and waving his hands around as though trying to fight off a swarm of invisible wasps, was enthralling.   
  
There was not much class participation in his lessons, though. If somebody put their hand up to ask a question, they would be studiously ignored, until Rosier had finished his dramatic speech on vampire defence (which was always more heavily descriptive of the vampires than of the defence). And then, when they asked their question, Rosier would shudder to hear such dull voices, such dreary, academic questions in his class-room.   
  
But he couldn't stop the torrent of enthusiasm that greeted him when he announced that the class would be learning to tackle Boggarts that afternoon:   
  
“But Sir, my worst fear is a Boggart that’s immune to the Riddikulus Charm.”  
  
“Sir, say I was afraid of the school closing…”   
  
“You know, if you could really convince yourself that what you feared most in the world was a naked woman, then the Boggart would turn into…”   
  
This last scheme was cooked up by Sirius Black and was therefore in danger of being skilfully carried out, but Rosier had the presence of mind to say:   
  
“An excellent student like yourself, Mr Black, will be well aware, I’m sure, that a Boggart cannot be fooled by any amount of _thinking_. It will not pay attention to what is in your mind, but proceed straight to your heart. Only your deepest, darkest fears are of interest to it, and no wizard has yet succeeded in using his fears to his advantage.”   
  
“Sounds like a challenge, to me,” Sirius muttered under his breath.  
  
“Let me assure you that if your Boggart does, indeed, take the form of a naked woman, it does not bode well for your future relationships.”   
  
There were copious sniggers from the class, and Sirius blushed. Still, he was not the kind to allow other people to enjoy themselves without joining in and, after a few minutes, he was laughing as hard as the rest of them.   
  
Rosier led them into the adjoining classroom one by one to tackle the Boggart. Lily soothed Meg while they waited.   
  
"But I'm not afraid of anything," she moaned. "And I really wanted to tackle the Boggart! It's not fair!"   
  
Lily wondered what her own Boggart would look like. Anxious as she had been about Severus leaving the class in Transfiguration, looking pale and distracted, she couldn’t help but be glad that he wasn’t there to see her face before she tackled the Boggart. She didn’t want him to know how apprehensive she was. And, if he saw her coming out of the Boggart room, he would know immediately what she’d seen. He always knew what was bothering her – perhaps because very few things really did, so he didn’t have much to choose from.   
  
“I reckon Potter will see you refusing to go out with him,” Meg murmured, as they watched James Potter, looking pale and sweaty, being summoned into the Boggart room.   
  
“Then he’s a very brave boy,” Lily observed, “because he’s had to face his worst fear about eight times so far.”   
  
“He won’t give up, you know,” Meg said, grinning.   
  
“One of us will have to,” Lily said grimly. “And it’s not going to be me.”   
  
“Mary said he gave you chocolates last night.”   
  
Lily shrugged. “Do you want them? I’m not so keen on milk chocolate. I like my chocolate dark and bitter.”   
  
“Like you like your men,” Meg added sagely.   
  
Lily covered her sudden agitation by a fit of coughing. “Meg!” she whispered, when she could talk again.   
  
“What?” Meg asked, spreading her hands innocently. “I won’t tell anyone. I can keep a secret, if it’s for someone I care about.”   
  
“There’s nothing to tell,” Lily insisted. “Really.”  
  
“Well, that’s a relief,” her friend confessed. “I know I said nobody was good enough for you, but I didn’t expect you to give up entirely, and start dating a Death Eater.”   
  
“You think he’s a Death Eater?” Lily asked, in a small voice.   
  
“Well, let’s see,” said Meg, smiling kindly. “He invents weird dark curses, he calls muggle-borns ‘mudbloods’, he used the Cruciatus Curse on Malfoy, and he hangs around with Avery and Bellatrix Black. I’d say it was pretty much a foregone conclusion, yeah.”   
  
Lily didn’t reply. There were shouts proceeding from the Boggart room. She wondered what Potter was facing in there.   
  
“Prongs is better,” Meg murmured, nudging her out of her reverie. “He’s the best one of the Marauders, anyway.”   
  
Lily gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “That’s like saying War is the best Horseman of the Apocalypse – because in war, at least theoretically, one side gets to win. It’s still not a good recommendation.”   
  
Meg barked with laughter and then, checking that they couldn’t be overheard (which was most unlike her), she said: “Which Horsemen would the other Marauders be?”   
  
“Well, Lupin would be famine,” Lily said sadly. “Have you seen the way his robes are hanging off him these days?”   
  
“I wish his robes were hanging off him a little bit more,” Meg muttered, and the two girls giggled.   
  
“Pettigrew would be pestilence,” Meg resumed. “Just because he gives me the creeps. And he spreads poisonous rumours.”   
  
“He’s just shy,” Lily chided, only half meaning it. There was something troubling about Pettigrew, that shyness couldn’t quite account for. He was spinelessly vicious; he had a cruelty that you never really noticed, because it only showed itself on the rare occasions when he had anyone at his mercy. “Anyway,” she continued, not trusting herself to defend Pettigrew to the hilt, “that leaves your boyfriend with Death, which seems a bit unfair.”   
  
“No, that’s about right,” Meg conceded. “Death and war are similar, just like Potter and Sirius – you wouldn’t want to turn your back on either of them. But at least Potter will give you a fighting chance.”   
  
“And Sirius wouldn’t?” Lily asked, in some surprise.   
  
“Sirius just wants to win,” Meg said, almost proudly. “He doesn’t care how he does it. Potter isn’t exactly Florence Nightingale, but he’s got honour. He just needs a Florence Nightingale to teach him bout kindness.”   
  
“Nice try, Megaera,” Lily said, using Meg’s full name, which she only ever did when she was being stern. “But I’m not going out with him. He knows that.”   
  
“What he doesn’t know is when he’s beaten,” Meg added. “So watch out for him. He has a way of getting whatever he wants.”   
  
“Well, he’s never had to deal with anyone as stubborn as me before,” Lily assured her. “Anyway, we’ve talked about this. He just wants to be friends now.”   
  
“Yeah, right,” Meg said sarcastically. “And I suppose he told you he was giving up Quidditch and befriending all the Slytherins, too?”   
  
Lily didn’t answer. She had been spending a lot of time with Potter recently. He was a welcome distraction from her own problems. He listened to her; he never ranted about people he hated, or terrified her with enthusiastic descriptions of Dark Magic. He made her laugh.   
  
And there was something in his confidence that savoured of oblivion. You could lose yourself in it. Everything was so simple to him: Anyone who’d ever been kind to him merited unswerving loyalty, and anyone who’d ever insulted him merited eternal contempt. Slytherins were bad, and couldn’t be trusted, and everything would turn out alright, as long as you stuck by your friends and never thought you were beaten.   
  
He couldn’t have presented a starker contrast to Severus. Except that he looked a little like Severus, when he took his glasses off, and when the rain pinned his untidy hair to his forehead. But he carried himself differently. There was that undeniable swagger that Severus detested so much – as though he was trying to be as stylish on the ground as he was on his broomstick.      
  
And he got angry at the same things as she did: he didn’t just shrug and say that the world was like that and you had to fit in. And he never snapped at her when things weren’t going right for him.   
  
But her conscience was still plaguing her about it: he wasn’t interested in being her friend, and their tentative friendship was hurting Severus (though, she had to admit, that was possibly only because he despised anything that made Potter happy. She had no evidence that he cared for her. And he certainly didn’t seem to care what she thought of him, unless he was extremely misguided, because he’d used the Cruciatus Curse on Malfoy right in front of her).  
  
When Rosier finally called her name, she was quite glad to be summoned away from her thoughts. She had no idea what she was going to find in the adjoining classroom. Perhaps the Boggart would become an Acromantula, or a swarm of spiders (could a Boggart turn into a swarm?) Or perhaps it would turn into Severus Snape and tell her she was a soppy, stupid mudblood. Well, she had faced that particular nightmare, and she’d come through it OK.   
  
Or so she had thought, until she stepped into the Boggart-room.    
  
The curtains were closed in this classroom – which made the acrid cigar-smoke emanating from Rosier all the thicker. He never let them open the windows in his classes; he said the smoke created atmosphere. The desks and chairs had been cleared away, to create an open space down the middle of the room.   
  
“In case anybody faints,” Rosier explained, following her gaze. “Only MacDonald and Avery so far – though there have been a great many screams, threats, bribes, and attempts to break the door down, so the day hasn’t completely disappointed me.”   
  
Lily decided he wasn’t worth shouting at. She just raised her eyebrows and rolled up her sleeves. She could feel her lungs filling with smoke, but she wasn’t going to show weakness by coughing at him. “Could we get on with this, sir?”    
  
“Certainly, Miss Evans,” said Rosier – and then, because he couldn’t resist an opportunity for drama, he said: “Let us discover what lurks at the bottom of your heart!”    
  
He pointed his wand at a large, wooden chest on the far-side of the classroom – there was a click from somewhere inside, and the chest sprang out of it. And out of it climbed a black-robed woman, unfolding her sinuous limbs gracefully, and tossing back her dark red hair, because it had fallen over her eyes.   
  
Lily gasped. It was her. An almost unrecognizable version, and yet it was difficult to pin down exactly what was different.      
  
The Boggart-Lily had a sneering smile and a withering stare, like a red-haired Bellatrix Black. The sleeves of her tight-fitting black robes were rolled back, and she was holding out her arm to her young self, baring the left forearm so that she could see the ugly black tattoo that stood out so starkly against her still-young, still-ivory skin. Lily had never seen the Dark Mark before – it looked rather like there were black veins showing through her skin, throbbing to the surface, and arranged in a horrible tangle, to form a rough imitation of a skull with a snake protruding from its mouth. It looked like poisoned, bruised, diseased flesh. It looked like evil rising from within, bubbling up from the well-spring of her heart.   
  
But there were similarities, too, things she recognized. That was what made it so painful. The eyes were the same - just as sharp, and lively, but bitter and disillusioned. Jaded. There were lines on her face from raising her eyebrows, and smiling too much, which Lily had always been particularly prone to. And she was wearing the little ruby from the hourglass that contained Gryffindor’s House Points, the one that was currently tucked under Lily’s school-shirt, knocking against her pounding heart.      
  
The only sound that could be heard in the close, stifling classroom now was the scratching of Rosier’s quill as he enthusiastically took notes.   
  
Until the Boggart spoke. And it had the same low, calm, serious voice – it just had a sardonic, bitter edge – as though everything was a joke – as though she was weary to her very bones, but still laughing, because there was simply nothing else to be done. Lily shuddered.   
  
“Listen to me, child,” she purred. “You don’t want to make the same mistakes I did.”   
  
“Fascinating,” said Rosier. “I must tell you, Miss Evans, that your fears display the same inventiveness as your intellect. Boggarts hardly ever speak – because fear is seldom articulate. Fears are vague, strangling, palpitating things, not calm and well-spoken and – dare I say it? – rather attractive.”   
  
Even through her horror, Lily still looked up at him in annoyance. He couldn’t be allowed to say that kind of thing, could he? He was a teacher.   
  
“Your fears must be highly developed, Miss Evans. Unusual, for a Gryffindor, I must say. Too often, the Boggart of a Gryffindor is some kind of stupid, fanged, salivating monster, as crudely-imagined as a child’s painting. The Boggart seems almost embarrassed to turn into it. They have no sensitivity. How short-sighted, to be scared of the monsters under your bed, when – as you illustrate so well – it is the monsters in your bed that you should be worrying about. You see, there’s just no _point_ in bravery if you don’t feel any fear. There’s no merit in it for the victim, and no satisfaction in it for the aggressor. There is, I suppose, a kind of stark, savage beauty about creatures who feel no fear or pain – I could tell you stories, Miss Evans…”      
  
Lily raised her wand at the creature, without any clear idea of what she was going to do – more out of a fervent desire to make Rosier stop talking, but the teacher held up his hand.   
  
“I think we should hear what it has to say, don’t you, Miss Evans?”   
  
“Yes, sir,” Lily muttered resentfully. She knew he was going to make her sit through the entire performance. He wanted her to be as scared as possible – either because he really wanted to challenge her, or because he wanted to extract as much drama out of the situation as possible.   
  
The beautiful red-head – because she was beautiful – but slightly dimmed, as though they were looking at her through dirty glass, gave Rosier a languorous smile. “Thank you, Professor Rosier. Like you, I love the sound of my own voice. She’ll be glad she’s heard me out, when she knows.”   
  
Lily raised her eyebrows and lowered her wand slowly – she wasn’t going to let Rosier or the Boggart know that she was afraid.      
  
“You’ve already started turning into me, you know,” the Boggart-Lily purred. “It started when you tried to justify his behaviour.”   
  
She raised her voice in a cruel imitation of Lily’s soft, pleading, sentimental tones. “He can’t help it,” she whined, “he’s had a hard life – he was bullied, he was never loved, he was lonely. So you start overlooking things – a ‘mudblood’ here, a Cruciatus Curse there. He can’t help it. He needs you. What good would it do to run away from him? He needs your love and your understanding.”   
  
She leaned closer, lowering her voice to a whisper: “But what does he do with it, Lily? Everything he touches turns dark and twisted and bitter, even you. He bleeds you dry. He never stops taking things from you – your patience, your tenderness, your smiles – and he always wants more. He’s like a child: it’s never enough, because the world isn’t getting any better, he’s still angry, and your smiles are running out. He lashes out at you, whenever he feels powerless or frightened – and he hates himself for it. And he hates you for making him do it. He gets possessive and jealous: he thinks you’ll leave him just like everyone else does. And he starts to resent you, because you’re a mud-blood and you’ve ruined all his prospects and driven away all his friends. In the end, you make things worse for him. People are always more frightened when they have something to lose. You think kindness can change anything, don’t you? You think it can make a mark deeper than all the scars of cruelty and neglect combined, but you’re wrong, and you know it. The world is not a very nice place, and neither is his heart. Don’t trust him, Lily – he never had any innocence; you have more to lose than he does. I’m the ghost of Christmas yet to come, and you had better pay attention.”   
  
“It’s March,” said Lily coldly, raising her wand. “And they wouldn’t let you join the Death Eaters. You’re a mudblood.”   
  
There was a slight intake of breath from Rosier, who wasn’t used to hearing the word ‘mudblood’ from mudbloods, but Lily paid no attention to him.   
  
“Riddikulus!” she said, her mouth curled with disgust.   
  
The Boggart vanished into wisps of acrid-smelling smoke. Lily was sure it wouldn’t have smelled so bad if the creature hadn’t been so poisoned with bitterness.   
  
Rosier was staring at her, a thoughtful smile playing around his thin lips. “Well done, Miss Evans. Most impressive. Might I enquire who she was talking about?”   
  
“No, sir,” Lily said, as kindly as she could. She had to give him credit for the polite way he’d asked.   
  
“Of course,” Rosier remarked, his smile broadening. “Clearly, you are afraid that this man will make you act against your conscience, force you to choose between your heart and your soul.”   
  
“I’ve already chosen, sir,” Lily said cheerfully. “Can I please go now?”   
  
“Very well,” Rosier said, scratching fervently on the parchment with his quill. “Full marks, Miss Evans. Most… illuminating. And, by the way, when they say at this school that you are a muggle, they’re quite mistaken. I know all about muggles and, let me assure you, you are not one of them.”   
  
“Thank you, sir,” Lily said politely. “Did you grow up with muggles?”   
  
“In a manner of speaking, Miss Evans. They certainly educated me.”   
  
Lily had the distinct impression that, whatever he could possibly have to say, she didn't want to hear it, so she gave him the most civil smile she could muster, and left, the smell of the Boggart and the cigar smoke heavy and raw in her throat.


	34. The Corona

Although Regulus Black was clever, talented, even popular, people were still not quite sure about him. For starters, there was the fact that he fell into trances and barked out proverbs, like some kind of sage and venerable Tourette’s sufferer. For another, he was cheerful all the time: and it was starting to border on hysteria.   
  
He had his cousin Bella’s manic energy and ghoulish enthusiasm; he had his brother’s good looks and cruel sense of humour; he had Lucius Malfoy’s sense of wounded fury, and world-weary disgust. But he had a couple of things that were all his own.   
  
When he fell into the trance-like state in which he recited proverbs, he could see magic, hovering around people like auras. It was like an eclipse: the people were standing in the way of the full blaze, but Regulus could see a fiery outline around them – a corona, he believed it was called. And different people’s magic had different colours and shapes: Bella’s was red and always looked like hell fire – but it extended for yards around her, like demonic wings. Potter’s was a bright, forget-me-not blue, like the sky on a day of perfect Quidditch conditions, and it spread out behind him like a billowing cloak. Severus’ was black, and never the same shape twice; sometimes it blended in with the shadows: it was the kind of magic that thrilled in concealment. But it was immense – a tangle of tendrils that could reach for miles if they would only relax. Sometimes, they snaked around the room while he seemed to be absorbed in something else. Severus was a master of misdirection – and, evidently, he was always thinking about several things at once.    
  
But sometimes – and it was the oddest thing – Severus’ magic would change form and colour: there would be a kind of alchemical transmutation – and, spreading outwards from his body, there would be waves of bright, lush green, like a rainforest canopy. And then the magic would spread out: the black tendrils would turn into jungle creepers, or climbing Ivy – and it would reach for something – Regulus was never quite sure what.   
  
He had tried to pay attention to where Snape was and who he was with when this bizarre transmutation occurred, but he couldn’t spot a pattern. Sometimes it happened in class, when Severus sat hunched over his work in the front row, never making eye contact with anyone: sometimes it happened out in the grounds, when he would sit in the shadows, squirming in the sunlight, and watch the tide of students sunning themselves on the lawn.   
  
There was only one thing Regulus knew for certain: it never, ever happened in the Quidditch stadium.   
  
And there were… other consequences of Regulus’ trance-state. Things that worried him. He started to believe things – stupid, soft, pathetic things – things that made him sick to remember. He started to believe that all human beings were connected, that hatred killed the soul, that even muggles had their own kind of magic.  
  
These thoughts terrified and revolted Regulus. He was not going to be a blood-traitor like his brother. But even that was different – Sirius was doing it to be rebellious, to be popular – he didn’t believe it. It was so much worse to believe it. The idea of muggles having magic, having souls, made his skin crawl. It was like a cow in a field suddenly looking up and telling you that you weren’t living your life properly, and that you had to walk on all fours and chew cud from now on because, flashy as all that two-legged walking is, it just doesn’t cut the mustard.     
  
That was why he couldn’t go to sleep, because he was so terrified that he would wake up in the trance state – that he would forget his blood-loyalties and the glorious history of his family. He fought with all his might against the liberal, fluffy-bunny, peace-and-love epiphanies that the trance-state induced in him: a state of warmth and love and understanding so intense that he was surprised he didn’t wake up with flowers braided into his hair! He hated, hated, hated it!    
  
He hadn’t asked for wisdom – or whatever this was; it was all his stupid brother’s fault. Sirius had always been jealous – because their parents liked him best. He had meant this to happen – he had meant Regulus to suffer traitorous, tree-hugging hopes and dreams.   
  
Regulus had admired the Dark Lord for a long time. He had been brought up to think that the wizard world was being polluted, that magical blood was being thinned out by inter-breeding with inert, block-headed muggles, that magic was struggling to survive against the infectious muggle-ness that surrounded it. Throughout mankind’s history, there had never been an under-class with superior weapons to the over-class. It was a precarious state of affairs: it couldn’t last. If they didn’t fight to become the muggles’ masters, they would end up becoming the muggles’ slaves. Sheer weight of numbers would overwhelm them – because, block-headed as they were, there were a lot of them.   
  
But he had to fight with every fibre of his being to suppress the creeping notion that killing a muggle was just like stabbing yourself in the leg with a fork.   
  
What did that _mean_ , anyway? He didn’t even understand the thoughts that were pushing their way into his head. But he understood enough to know that his parents would throw him out of the house for ever giving voice to them. His mother would probably die of shame. She’d nearly had a heart attack when Sirius had been Sorted into Gryffindor.   
  
He found Snape in an arm-chair by the common-room fire. He was staring into the flames with a cruel, absent-minded smile, and Regulus wondered whether something of James Potter’s was being burnt in there. Whenever he smiled like that, it meant he was contemplating some terrible piece of Dark Magic, and you just had to hope fervently that he wasn’t planning to use it on you. The flames of the common-room fire were reflected in his black eyes, giving them the appearance of glowing coals.    
  
“My uncle says he can get Dumbledore out of the castle tonight,” Regulus muttered, sitting down beside him and not troubling to keep his voice down.   
  
“Tonight?” Severus asked, blinking in surprise at the interruption.   
  
“Yeah, it has to be tonight, ‘cause there’s a big delegation of Norwegian wizards coming to visit the Ministry tomorrow, and they’ll be there for three weeks. Has to be tonight.”   
  
“Oh.”   
  
“Why?” Regulus asked impatiently. “You’ve got something on that’s more important than joining the Dark Lord?”   
  
Snape had been staring into the middle distance, but he suddenly seemed to come back to reality with these words. “Of course not,” he said. “Tonight’s fine. I'll just have to make a quick trip to London first, that's all.”   
  
Regulus was going to ask about this, but Snape held up his hand to fore-stall any questions. He was always like this. He wouldn’t reveal his plans until they were sitting right on top of you – in some cases, literally.   
  
“Let’s go over this again,” said Snape. “What, exactly, is your uncle going to do?”   
  
Regulus rolled his eyes. Snape was such a stickler for accuracy. In a bored voice, he recited: “At seven O’clock this evening, my uncle, the Minister for Magic, is going to send Dumbledore an owl, asking for his help on some treaty that he’s signing with the Bulgarian Ministry. By half-past Eight, Dumbledore will have left the castle. My uncle says he can keep him there until at least Ten. That’ll give us an hour and a half to get Caladrius out of the castle without anyone noticing.”  
  
“Right,” said Snape.   
  
“And how, exactly, are we going to do that?”   
  
“Leave it to me,” Snape said, smiling his worrying smile. After a pause, he added: “He’s not really your uncle, is he?”   
  
“No,” Regulus shrugged, “just a friend of my mum’s, who used to come round to the house a lot, whenever dad was out. So he owes me a favour.”   
  
“How did you get in touch with him?”   
  
“I used the Floo network in Slughorn’s Office. Honestly, Slughorn will let you do anything for a box of crystallized pineapple. It’s his Achilles heel. Well, that and the enormous gut. Mary Macdonald nearly walked in on me – you know, the Gryffindor mudbl - ,”    
  
“Don’t use that word,” Severus interrupted.   
  
“Why not?”   
  
He sighed. “Because it makes you conspicuous, idiot. It’s like the enemies of the Dark Lord using his real name. It shows your true allegiance as soon as you open your mouth and, right now, allegiances are dangerous things to show. Do you want people to be able to read you like a book?”  
  
“I don’t care,” said Regulus truthfully. “They should know they’re scum.”   
  
“Yes, how clever,” Snape said sarcastically. “It would be good if it worked like that, wouldn’t it? Tell people they’re scum, and they turn around and say: ‘You know what? You’re right. You’ve opened my eyes. I’d shake your hand, only I’d be afraid of getting slime on it.’”   
  
Regulus scowled and started twirling his wand through his fingers in a meaningful sort of way, but Snape didn’t seem to notice.   
  
“If someone called you an inbred moron, would you believe them?” Snape went on, adding insult to injury. “No. But you’d know they were your enemy. You’re not going to convince any of the muggle-borns at this school that they don’t belong here, but you are going to convince them that you’re a potential Death Eater. That’s just the way things are. People have already made their minds up.”   
  
“I’d be proud to be a Death Eater,” Regulus protested.   
  
“Until they threw you in Azkaban,” said Severus, “where what little remains of your sanity would be sucked out through your mouth.”   
  
Like the rest of his family, Regulus was quick-tempered. He was also a Slytherin, however, and he could tell that it wasn’t wise to lose your temper with Severus Snape. Not now, anyway: there was something distressing about the hellish light in his eyes. Somehow, it was still there even when he looked away from the fire.  “You grew up with the filth,” Regulus muttered accusingly. “I don’t know how you can defend them.”       
  
“Well, why limit yourself to only hating one type of person?” Severus replied with bitter brightness. “Why confine your hatred to one tiny segment of the population when there are despicable people everywhere you look?”  
  
“You’re a real ray of sunshine, you know that, Severus?” Regulus replied.   
  
“You were expecting a chocolate biscuit and a mug of cocoa? Then go to Dumbledore. Somebody needs to teach you that there’s more to dark magic than wearing masks and taking all your aggression out on muggles.”   
  
“Of course there is,” Regulus said mischievously, “there’s the ‘impressing girls’ aspect, too.”   
  
Snape seemed to falter for a second, but he recovered immediately, more angry than ever.   
  
“Dark Magic,” he snapped, “is _not_ an expensive night-club where you have to wear black and tell sick jokes. There’s work involved.”     
  
“I think I’ve been to that night-club,” said Regulus cheerfully. “It’s in Knockturn Alley, right? With the dancing girls? If you make a joke sick enough, you get your entrance fee refunded. You should really go, because I imagine, for you, the entrance fee would be the only problem.”   
  
He had gone too far: he knew it, because he sank for a moment into his trance-state, and saw that Snape’s magical aura was towering above him, its tendrils swinging menacingly.   
  
Regulus snapped back into reality with more than usual relief. “Listen,” he said, smiling disarmingly. “I should probably go and… check on the preparations. You know, for tonight. Make sure Caladrius doesn’t smell a rat.”   
  
“If that’s your intention, I suggest you keep well away from him,” Severus replied icily.   
  
Regulus gave a nervous chuckle. “Good one, Sev.”   
  
“I told you not to call me that.”   
  
There was the looming aura again. It had never looked so dark – except in the Quidditch stadium after Slytherin’s last defeat to Gryffindor (Potter had made a spectacular capture of the Snitch two minutes in – and that was in spite of the fact that a band of enterprising Slytherin girls had taken their tops off in an effort to distract him).   
  
Regulus backed away. Even when he was in his trance-state, filled with feelings of peace and understanding, he knew that it was not wise to turn your back on Severus Snape. Perhaps all human beings _were_ connected, but Snape didn’t seem to know that.    
  
  
Lucius Malfoy had been taken to an up-market wizard prison in London. It was housed in the upper-storeys of one of those crooked, leaning, beamed buildings that overhung the cobbles of Diagon Alley, and was really more of an inn than a prison: Malfoy’s ‘cell’ was upholstered in green velvet, and opened out onto its own cobble-stoned courtyard, with a fountain in the middle. The Minister for Magic hadn’t wanted to lock him up at all, but Dumbledore had insisted, and Dumbledore’s opinion carried a lot of weight in the Wizengamot.   
  
In fact, Dumbledore had been angry. It was an unusual sight, but nobody who saw it ever forgot it. Those blue eyes – usually as light and frothy as a Caribbean tide – got fiery when people threatened his students.   
  
The place was still guarded by Dementors, but thin, ragged ones like the Archivist of Azkaban, who weren’t strong enough to feed on living humans – Dementors who had to hover around books or paintings or corpses, scavenging on the traces of human happiness left hanging around them. There was a slight chill to the air: otherwise, you’d never know that a Dementor had been there.  
  
He had been given a shave and a new set of fine silken robes: Peleus Buntz had been called in to measure him for them, gushing all the time about his noble profile and his aristocratic bearing. Lucius had asked for robes in the same duck-egg blue satin that Narcissa had had her dress made from: it was like being near her, in a way.    
  
He was madly in love now. The feelings that had led him to kidnap her and take her to his father’s oubliette seemed like feeble fondness compared with what he now felt. The look she had given him as she passed him her wand in the oubliette! A beam of understanding had passed between them. He knew what she wanted him to be now – dominant. There would be no more talk of politics: no networking or campaigning or canvassing. She didn’t want a man to hand out canapés: she wanted one who would hand out orders.   
  
She wanted a warrior. And, luckily enough, there was a war coming. There would be plenty of opportunities to distinguish himself, to do something spectacular in order to impress her. He just had to wait.   
  
Tonight, he was walking in his courtyard, listening to the liquid murmuring of the fountain, and the sounds of evening-shoppers wending their way back to the Leaky Cauldron and the dreary, muggle world outside. There was a thin crescent moon etched across the sky like a scar.  
  
Lucius was pacing from one end of the walled courtyard to another, his hands clasped behind his back in a posture of would-be calm. Waiting wasn’t easy – especially when he thought of Narcissa at Hogwarts, surrounded by filthy, base-blooded admirers. Could he still trust Severus to keep them away? Probably not: putting the Cruciatus Curse on you was not exactly a time-honoured gesture of loyalty.    
  
When he got to the far end of the courtyard, he turned round again, only to see the object of his thoughts sitting on the side of the fountain, greasy-haired and shadowy-faced, as always.    
  
“How did you get in here?” he asked sharply, still not entirely sure that he wasn’t dreaming. The Amortentia was doing strange things to him. He kept hallucinating. Last night, he’d held a twenty-minute conversation with his father, who’d been dead for five years.   
  
The problem was that people who’d taken Amortentia didn’t tend to live that long, so nobody really knew what prolonged exposure to the poison did to you. You either got cured or you got killed – you didn’t live in limbo, wandering around a Dementor-guarded prison, with only your thoughts for company.   
  
But the first words out of Snape’s mouth convinced him that he wasn’t dreaming.   
  
“How would you like to owe me for the rest of your life?” he asked.   
  
Those black eyes, the ones that you thought were bottomless until you smacked head-long into them and broke your nose, were glittering.   
  
Lucius narrowed his eyes, too angry and suspicious to be cautious. “I do not want to speak to you,” he growled.    
  
“That’s a shame,” said Snape patiently, raising his eyebrows, “because I can give you what you want more than anything else on earth.”   
  
“You couldn’t possibly be hiding Narcissa under those robes,” Lucius muttered, turning away with his usual brand of lazy disdain.   
  
“I could, actually,” said Snape, “but I’m not.”   
  
“Then you have nothing to say that could possibly interest me,” Lucius replied, mastering his anger. The half-blood was getting more and more insolent: he was actually starting to talk as though he deserved to be in the same room with a Malfoy, let alone hold a conversation with one.    
  
“She’s waiting for me,” Severus said.   
  
The effect created by these words was instant: Lucius whipped out his wand. At first, Snape thought that he was going to attack him, but the spell sailed straight above his head and hit the fountain behind him. The water paused in its tumbling motion. Little drops stood frozen in the air like crystals. The quiet murmur of the falling water was instantly silenced.   
  
“ _What did you say?_ ” Lucius breathed. His nostrils were flaring lividly.   
  
Snape licked his lips, wondering whether he was going to get out of this alive. Still, he had to answer. He would suffer a fatal nose-bleed if he didn’t.     
  
“She’s waiting for me,” he said. “She’s going to do…” he paused: there was a cruel but wistful look in his eyes, “ _weird_ things to me. She seems like that kind of girl.”  
  
He had to dodge behind the fountain, because Malfoy lunged at him, forgetting all about his wand and reaching out with fists and teeth. Snape watched him warily through the frozen jets of water, and said: “You _asked_ , Lucius.”      
  
“She’s waiting for _you_?” said Malfoy with forced calm.   
  
“Yes.”   
  
“You?”   
  
“I know.”   
  
“ _You_?”   
  
Snape looked back at him patiently. “Are you finished?”    
  
“But…” Malfoy paused. For the first time since Severus had met him, he looked lost: there was no more stern, self-righteous outrage. He was suddenly forlorn and bewildered, his dark blue eyes filmed over with tears. “But why you?” he asked wretchedly.   
  
Damn! He couldn’t lie to Malfoy. Well, he would just have to approach the truth from a different angle. “This might not be easy for you to listen to, Lucius,” he said slowly, “but she’s a bitch. I mean, she’s mental. She wants people who don’t like her: and, unfortunately, there are a _lot_ of people who don't like her. You know I can’t lie to you and I’m telling you that, apart from letting her kiss me, I never encouraged her.”    
  
His obvious lack of nose-bleed verified this claim.  
  
Malfoy sagged. “But I can’t stop liking her,” he moaned.   
  
“Yes, you can,” said Severus, smiling triumphantly. “You know what the cure for Amortentia poisoning is?”   
  
“Sex or death,” Lucius muttered darkly.   
  
“Right,” said Severus. “I’m assuming you’re in favour of the first one?”   
  
He fished two objects out of the pockets of his robes, clasped one in each fist, and held them out to him. “This,” he said, opening his left hand, which held a small glass phial, “is Polyjuice potion –and _this_ ,” he held out his other hand, on which there nestled a single, jet-black hair, “is one of my hairs. You put this in this and you get a potion to look like me.”   
  
“A dubious advantage,” Malfoy muttered.   
  
“But not tonight.”   
  
Severus watched his pale-haired friend with mounting exasperation. He could see Malfoy’s puritanical mind crawling laboriously to the right conclusion. It probably didn't like the conclusion: Malfoy was always revolted by the things that made him happy, because he didn't want to be the carnal, hedonistic idiot that he undoubtedly was.    
  
“You mean…”   
  
“She’s waiting for me,” Severus repeated.    
  
“Severus…”   
  
“Now, I don’t have to explain what you do once you get there, right?”  
  
Malfoy glared at him: “It’s a shame I have to use your body,” he said acidly. “I don’t want to disappoint the poor girl.”   
  
“Well, this is the body she made a date with,” Severus pointed out. “She could have made a date with yours, but she didn’t.”   
  
“That’s because she hasn’t seen it.”     
  
Snape raised his eyebrows, but decided not to argue. At times, Lucius could be as arrogant as Potter and as vain as Gilderoy Lockhart. Still, he’d had a difficult couple of weeks: he’d been poisoned, tortured and locked up and, for a spoilt, long-haired pretty-boy, who was used to having things handed to him on a silver-platter, that was not easy to cope with.    
  
“But how will I get into the castle?” Malfoy asked urgently, much too excited to keep arguing.    
  
“You’ll be _me_ ,” Severus explained, his patience starting to crack under the strain. “You live there. In fact, I need you to be seen, being me, because I’m going to be somewhere else tonight, and I’ll need an alibi, in case I ever decide to go back to Hogwarts.”   
  
Lucius didn’t think to question him. He reached for the phial and the hair hungrily, but Severus drew his hands back. “There’s just one little thing,” he said.  
  
“Of course,” Lucius said, smiling unpleasantly. He knew how to bribe people. He had been so swept up in the excitement of seeing Narcissa again, that he’d forgotten that nothing was free. “Shall we say ten thousand Galleons?”   
  
Snape blinked. He had never even _seen_ that amount of money. He wondered how many rooms it would fill. Of course, money didn’t matter to him, but sometimes, when Lily walked past expensive books and dresses in shop windows, and stared in at them with that plaintive look she had sometimes, before her spirit rallied, as it always did – at times like that, he thought how good it would be to flash money around, like Potter and Malfoy did. He would never want to buy her love, but he had no objections to buying her happiness.    
  
And his mother. It would be so good to get her another house, away from his dad, maybe in an all-wizard settlement like Hogsmeade, where her delicate spirit would no longer be ground into the dust by the dreary muggle-ness that surrounded her in Spinner’s End.    
  
But his mother wouldn’t leave his dad. And Lily… Well, that was too painful to think about right now.   
  
“Maybe,” he said, trying to control the sudden greed that had seized him. “We don’t have to talk about it right now.”    
  
He needed to get rid of Potter, but he knew he couldn’t ask Lucius to do that. Lucius solved every problem by throwing money at it - and unless he tried to crush Potter under a ton of Galleons, that was not going to work. Dumbledore was protecting Potter, and you couldn’t get around Dumbledore with money – only with superior skill. The Dark Lord was the only one who could rid him of Potter.  
  
But Lucius had money. And people seemed to listen to him. In a world where history mattered more than anything, it would be useful to have the last surviving member of an ancient magical family in your debt.   
  
“Sometimes, I might need money,” he said vaguely. “And sometimes, I might need your influence with important people. But I won’t take anything you can’t afford.”   
  
“That’s it?” Lucius asked warily.   
  
“That’s it,” Severus said, with a shrug. “I know you’d pay anything in exchange for this – you’d sell your soul for this – so I want you to remember - and this is part of the price - that, when I had you at my mercy, I was gentle.”  
  
Lucius promised that he would, and then held out his hands for the Polyjuice Potion imploringly. Severus gave in. There was no talking to him in this state. He handed Malfoy the phial as though handing a rattle to a baby – and with the same contemptuous sneer.   
  
“How did you get in?” Lucius asked, holding the mud-coloured potion up to his eyes in the pale moonlight. It remained obstinately opaque. Severus was impressed: lots of poisons resembled Polyjuice Potion at first sight, but they became translucent in the light. Perhaps Amortentia really had sharpened Malfoy’s wits.   
  
“I suppose you haven’t had an opportunity to test the theory, but you are allowed visitors,” Severus remarked.   
  
Malfoy looked surprised. “I am?”   
  
“Yeah. They didn’t even search me. One of those wizards from the Department of Rehabilitation’s at the door. He seemed to think that a hard-working student like me would be a good influence on you.”   
  
Malfoy laughed, but for a little too long. Snape peered at him dubiously. He was certainly looking healthier than the last time he’d seen him: he was clean-shaven, but his pale hair and pale blue robes were at their palest in the wintery moonlight. He looked a little ghostly, as though he was fading into the background, like the Dementors that guarded the place.      
  
“How have you been feeling?” Snape asked, as casually as he could.    
  
Malfoy gestured around at the court-yard. “Like I’m in prison,” he said simply. “But then, every place that isn’t Hogwarts tends to make me feel like that. Is Narcissa going to press charges?”   
  
“Of course not.” Severus couldn’t keep the sneer out of his voice. “She wouldn’t risk it. Anyone with half a brain-cell could see that you’ve been given Amortentia.”  
  
“But she is clever,” Malfoy replied, a shade reproachfully. “And noble and beautiful. She doesn’t have to stoop to petty things like laws.”   
  
Severus didn’t see the point in contradicting him. In any case, he knew what was coming: another speech on Narcissa’s various perfections – and there was no avoiding it. It had been gathering momentum all the time he’d been in prison, with nobody to rhapsodize about Narcissa to. Malfoy’s happiness when he was talking about Narcissa was so intense that it would have made a Dementor sick.   
  
“All the other women I’ve ever met were… pale shadows compared to her.”   
  
“Pale shadows?” Snape asked.   
  
“You know what I mean.”    
  
Snape tried half-heartedly to change the subject.     
  
“What did your father do in those tunnels?” he asked. “Where did he get the skulls? And the Griffin? And how has it survived in there all this time?”   
  
Malfoy’s face clouded. “It’s a secret,” he muttered, almost shyly. “I can’t tell you.”   
  
“Not even for Narcissa?” Severus asked.   
  
“I’d do anything for Narcissa,” Malfoy mumbled hoarsely. “I’d die for Narcissa – and this _would_ be dying for Narcissa – but I’d prefer not to have to.”   
  
“I see,” said Snape. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll find out, I expect.”   
  
“Severus, stay away from those tunnels.”   
  
Snape didn’t reply. For a moment, he thought about Narcissa in her neat, elegant school-uniform, with her china-doll complexion, and the gold trimmings on her shoe laces, and felt a twinge of regret. He wondered whether he was mourning the loss of her body, or the chance to mess up her immaculate appearance. Probably both.   
  
Still, it wasn’t much fun holding a china doll in your arms; when he’d kissed her, all he had thought about was how cold and pointed she was, a far cry from the warm, soft, breathing, flawed and luminous beauty that was Lily. The most fun you could have with a china doll was breaking it.   
  
He would turn this to his advantage. Everything he’d ever been denied was an advantage now, because nothing sharpened your wits like hunger.   
  
“Why did you put the Cruciatus Curse on me?” Malfoy asked suddenly, as though voicing a question that he was unable to bite back any longer.    
  
“It was an accident,” Severus said, without thinking. He’d got so used to lying that it had become second nature. Then, after a few seconds of blissful ignorance, he started to wonder why his nose wasn’t bleeding.   
  
  
Snape left Malfoy in the court-yard, guzzling the Polyjuice Potion as though it was Butterbeer, and walked through the streets of Diagon Alley, back to the Leaky Cauldron, and the Floo Network that would take him back to Hogwarts, perhaps for the last time.   
  
He couldn’t believe he was still alive.   
  
It was a Contrition Charm, it had to be. It didn’t detect lies; it detected the guilt caused by them! You could lie to a fellow Death Eater as long as you didn’t feel bad about it. The Charm wasn’t there to test your obedience; it was there to test your daring! If you could go ahead and lie, without the guilt, without the worry, believing that the strength of your will-power could take on any kind of magic, no matter how powerful and ancient, then the Dark Lord knew you were a perfect Death Eater.   
  
That was the key to all magic: believe that you can do it and you can. You didn’t have to be clever, you just had to be arrogant. Potter would have figured it out in a second. That was why Potter was always going to be better. He didn’t wonder how he could adapt to suit magic, he wondered how magic could adapt to suit him.   
  
It wasn’t _fair_. Magic was intricate and complex – it should reward understanding, not oafish, loud, blundering confidence.  
  
It was like Lily: intelligence couldn’t win her over – it didn’t matter whether you understood her – as long as you thought you did. She wanted a loud, big-headed Quidditch player, whose only skill was not falling out of the air when every physical law – including the fervent prayers of the spectators – meant that he should have done. He was the equivalent of one of those cartoon cave-men who dragged women around by their hair (muggle thinking, his brain interjected, but he was too angry to care).    
  
He should have known it all along, he realized. How did his father get his mother to marry him? How does a drunk, unemployed, ex-mill-worker get a nobly-born, brilliantly sensitive, witch to marry him – by reading books? By talking to her?   
  
He’d been so stupid. Life had been trying to teach him lessons all this time, and he’d been covering his ears.   
  
And now that he knew the world was unfair: now that he knew the two loves of his life – magic and Lily – had unforgivably bad taste, what was he going to do about it? There was only one option, as far as he could see: he had to be bad for them.   
  
You could do anything if you believed you could. Somewhere back in the mists of time, when his muggle cousins were still rubbing sticks together, the first wizard must have thought: I bet I can make fire just by _thinking_ it.   
  
It didn’t matter that the first wizard must have been an arrogant creep: he got things done.   
  
Well, he thought, you passed the test, even if you did it by accident, when Potter would have blundered through with full marks, as usual. And you can keep doubt out of your thoughts, if you really concentrate, like you did with the Griffin in the oubliette. That’s the key: look at the world with absolute contempt, like Potter does, and it will come and kneel at your feet.


	35. Professor Caladrius

Professor Caladrius was tall and balding, with a growth of wispy white hair ringing the bare crown of his head and dark circles under his small, beady, yellowish eyes.   
  
Lily had never taken Divination, but she had seen Professor Caladrius at the staff table, chewing warily and speaking little. It was rumoured that he had attempted to become an Animagus when he was seventeen, but the spell had gone terribly wrong. According to some of his students, the high, stiff collar he wore was to conceal the growth of feathers that still covered the back of his neck. This story would also explain his habit of stalking around the classroom and suddenly swooping down at his students, in order to read their work over their shoulders, while they worried about their exposed necks.   
  
He always walked very fast, and refrained from making eye-contact with anyone, so it was difficult to approach him. Lily, after getting very out of breath trying to catch up to him in the corridors, decided that shouting would be the best course of action.     
  
“Sir? Professor Caladrius?”   
  
Professor Caladrius stopped, shuddered and said, without turning round. “Please stand further away.”   
  
She stepped back a few paces and said hesitantly. “Is this far enough, Sir?”  
  
“Yes.” Caladrius turned round, but did not smile. “What can I do for you, Miss Evans?”   
  
Feeling slightly apprehensive about conducting a conversation from separate ends of the corridor, Lily paused, gathering her thoughts. “Sir, I’ve had strange… dreams… nightmares… ever since I got hit on the head with a cauldron.”  
  
“Why cannot Madam Pomfrey help you?”   
  
Provoked by his impassive expression, Lily’s voice became louder and stronger. “I’m on very good terms with Madam Pomfrey, sir, and fairly well-read on the subject of magical medicine myself. Neither of us can explain what’s been happening to me, and I thought it might be… your area of expertise.”  
  
For the first time, Caladrius betrayed a flicker of interest. “You believe that you have been having visions?” he asked.   
  
He was still gazing a few inches to the left of Lily, as though she was something very shocking or disgusting that he would rather avoid. Lily was used to this at Hogwarts, however, and didn’t let it discompose her.   
  
“I couldn’t think of any other explanation, sir. I know that Dementors cause distressing visions to appear in your head…”  
  
“No,” Professor Caladrius took a step towards her eagerly, winced, and then stepped back. “No, not visions. What Dementors cause us to experience are auditory hallucinations only. Well, auditory memories, really. But Dementors won’t cause you to _see_ things.”  
  
“Yes, that’s what Madam Pomfrey told me,” she replied steadily. “But what I see - ,” she broke off, as a group of Hufflepuff girls hurried past, on their way to lessons.   
  
“Sir, could we discuss this privately?” she asked, after they had gone.   
  
Caladrius surveyed her. For a moment, it seemed, interest struggled with his horror. It must have won, because he motioned for her to follow him, and stalked off without a word.   
  
He led her up to the Divination Tower, a bare, un-curtained, circular room, with wooden benches rising in levels all around the walls, and directed her to a seat in the highest row, where she sat, while he bustled about making tea. He moved in a very jerky fashion, she noticed and, once or twice, dropped things because his hands were shaking.   
  
Lily wondered whether he was ill, nervous or simply horrified to be in the presence of a muggle born witch. Very interested, and unwilling to condemn him as a muggle-hater without cause, she asked. “Are you alright, sir?”   
  
Caladrius’ hands jerked at the sound of her voice, and he ended up pouring tea onto a pile of homework. Lily hurried forwards to assist but he said sharply, without turning around: “That will undoubtedly make things worse, Miss Evans. Please stay where you are.”   
  
Lily went back to her seat and hovered by it. “How can you tell when I’m coming nearer?” she asked, as he used his wand to siphon off the spilled tea from the pile of homework.   
  
“I can sense you,” he said simply.   
  
“Is it because of your visions?” she asked eagerly. “Can you predict when I’m going to come nearer?”  
  
“Yes and no,” he said. “I see visions about people whenever I am in physical proximity with them.”   
  
“How close do they have to be?”   
  
“Within a radius of six feet from my position.”  
  
“That must be very distracting.”   
  
Caladrius turned to look at her. He seemed both pained and amused. “Distracting,” he said, “would be one way of describing it.”   
  
“But sir,” she said. “How do you teach? I’ve seen you standing closer than six feet from people in classes.”  
  
“During classes, there is such a concentration of people to inspire my visions, that I am not troubled by any particular one. I receive confused sensations of light and noise, but I am able to concentrate on my work. It is only when I am alone with people that I am unable to block the visions, or exert any measure of control.”   
  
“Would Occlumency help?”   
  
Caladrius, though white and shaking, seemed pleased. “A very intelligent question, but I am afraid not. You see, I have nothing so specific as a mental intrusion to block. It is not the person’s mind that intrudes upon me, but their future.”   
  
“And you see something distressing in mine, sir?”  
  
“I’m sorry,” said Caladrius. “I make it a point of professional honour never to discuss what I foresee with the people concerned.”   
  
“Even when it can be of help?”   
  
“It can never be of help,” he said firmly.  
  
Lily, who was burning with questions, was quite sorry to be interrupted before she could ask them. “You say you have been having visions?” Professor Caladrius asked, sending a cup of tea hovering over to her position at the back of the classroom.   
  
“Yes,” Lily said, catching it. Most of the tea had spilled into the saucer, but she thought it would be impolite to mention this. “It’s like a Dementor attack, I think, except that I see pictures. Sometimes I don’t know what they are, but for the most part, they’re horrible memories.”   
  
Professor Caladrius gave an impatient wave of his hand, which Lily thought rather tactless, but she didn‘t say anything. “The visions that you do recognise are unpleasant memories?” he asked.  
  
“Yes,” Lily replied, hoping that he wouldn’t ask her to be explicit.   
  
“And the ones that you cannot recognise? Describe them to me.”  
  
“These are the ones that made me think they were visions. They involve me, but I seem to be older; I’m still upset but I don’t recognise the cause.”   
  
“And when you see these distressing images, do you feel… unhappy?”   
  
Lily blinked. “No, sir, just confused.”  
  
“Tell me about the accident that occasioned these visions.”  
  
“I was hit on the head with a cauldron.”   
  
“And how did that happen?”   
  
“I don’t know, sir; I had my eyes closed at the time.”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“There was a spider.” Lily became aware that she wasn’t explaining herself very well, and backtracked. “You see, a… friend… told me to close my eyes because there was a spider above my head - I’m scared of spiders - he usually gets me to shut my eyes while he gets rid of them for me, so that I’m not too frightened. Only, this time, he... hit me on the head with a cauldron.”  
  
“By accident?”  
  
“I don’t think so,” she said slowly. It was a comfort to admit that she wasn’t absolutely sure.    
  
“Whose cauldron was it?”   
  
“Sir?”   
  
“It may be important.”  
  
Lily tried to think back. “I don’t know. It was already in the classroom when I came in.”  
  
Caladrius moved over to the window and gazed out of it for a while. There were never any curtains around the windows of the Divination Tower, and Professor Caladrius mostly opened the windows as wide as they would go during classes, in all weathers, so that it felt as though the classroom was outdoors. Rumour had it that this was because he still retained some bird-like characteristics from his botched Animagus transformation, and didn’t like the idea of being cooped up. It was certainly true that Lily had never seen him so animated, so triumphant, as when the rain was driving through the open windows into the Divination classroom, dripping off his hooked nose and pearling on his white, flyaway hair.   
  
After a silence of several minutes, Professor Caladrius murmured, “have you seen your death?”  
  
Lily half-closed her eyes; her expression was somewhere between a wince and a smile. “Is that what you see, sir?”   
  
Caladrius turned to look at her. He seemed to be assessing her. When it became obvious that he wasn’t going to answer, she murmured, “No, I haven’t. But I don’t think I see very far into the future - I’m definitely not much older.” She looked up at Caladrius, hoping for a reaction, but there wasn’t one, so she went on: “Do you… do you think you can help me, Sir?”   
  
“In what way?” Caladrius asked, turning aside. “Do you want to stop seeing the visions, or to stop the events you see from occurring?”   
  
Lily hesitated. “I thought that was impossible?”  
  
“They might both be impossible,” he said. “That’s certainly what I’ve found.”   
  
Lily was often drawn to people who seemed too wrapped up in their own concerns to notice hers. She supposed she liked to hide behind them. At any rate, she felt so terribly sorry for him that she wasn’t offended by his abruptness. She just waited patiently for him to get to the point.   
  
“I would like you to keep a dream diary for me,” he said, his voice softening slightly, “paying particular attention to the visions you do not recognise. I’d like to know more about what I’m dealing with before we go any further. We will meet again next week.”  
  
“Is that a prediction?” she asked playfully.   
  
Caladrius blinked. He looked ragged and tense, like a bird poised on a cliff-top. “It is a request,” he said.    
  
Lily managed a smile. “Yes, Sir. Sorry.”   
  
Whenever she did something stupid, she could imagine Severus burying his face in his hands. She had somehow internalised his disapproval.     
  
“Does Thursday at eight o‘clock suit you?” Caladrius swept on, as if there had been no interruption.   
  
“Yes, Sir.” Lily said again. She swung her bag back onto her shoulder and made for the door, noticing that he edged along the classroom wall as she walked. She was reminded powerfully of Silversmith. “Is it… is it only people’s deaths that you see, Sir?” she asked suddenly. (In her mind’s eye, Severus sank his face into his hands again).    
  
“Yes,” Caladrius replied, still looking out of the window. His voice was slightly higher than usual as he went on: “I understand from Professor Slughorn that you’re a very responsible student, Miss Evans. I therefore know that I can count on you to refrain from telling anybody about this. You can imagine how irksome it would become if all the students knew that I could predict the manner of their deaths. I would suddenly be very popular. And that is not a prospect that I relish, let me assure you.”  
  
Lily stood at the door for a while, staring wretchedly, and trying to cast around for something comforting to say. Eventually, she decided that the most comforting thing she could do for him was leave, so with a brave little smile (which, of course, he couldn’t see because he wouldn’t look at her), she turned and left.


	36. Divination

Caladrius liked to be in the company of Professor Slughorn, who would pass away quietly in his sleep some forty years hence. Slughorn, in his turn, was kind to the Divination Professor, because he was eager for information on the probable life-expectancy of his allies and acquaintances (after all, there was no point endearing oneself to a politician who would die prematurely, before he had a chance to make himself useful to you). He therefore made a point of introducing his protégés to Professor Caladrius, and watching Caladrius’ expression as he shook their hands. The more pronounced the Divination teacher’s wince, the less Slughorn tended to favour them. Consequently, the two teachers had developed a very self-serving friendship.  
  
Slughorn was enlightened and honourable, for all that he was selfish. He didn’t like to think about his favourite students’ deaths, and still less did he want to cause Caladrius any pain; he felt a sincere sympathy for the man – as he would for anybody who couldn’t get close to another human being without seeing them die. Therefore, he avoided asking direct questions about how and when his students would meet their ends. He knew that death was unavoidable, and sometimes useful (a realisation that distinguished him importantly from Voldemort) but he was content to be ignorant regarding its particulars. And he was very good at small-talk, which was all anyone felt safe directing at Professor Caladrius. Somehow, the conversation always seemed to grow morbid if you talked about anything else.   
  
“How do you like your NEWT students?” Slughorn asked affably, as they were having coffee in his office after dinner in the Great Hall.   
  
“There are just enough of them to make a comfortable-sized class,” Caladrius replied.   
  
Slughorn knew what he meant and, curious as he might have been, didn’t pursue the matter.   
  
“I’m disappointed at losing some of the brighter students, though,” Caladrius went on. “Divination, it seems, has a very poor reputation. None of the – how shall I put it? – _academic_ children seem inclined to pursue it to NEWT level.”   
  
“Well, that’s only to be expected, dear boy,” Slughorn replied airily. He was ten years older than Caladrius, and so felt quite safe in referring to him as a boy. “I myself could never make head or tail of the subject, though I daresay it was just my own adolescent impatience.”   
  
“I understand how much patience is required to be an excellent potion-maker, Horace. I could never suppose you to have been impatient, even as an adolescent.”  
  
Slughorn batted away the compliment with a good-natured wave of his hand.   
  
“I do miss seeing your protégés in class,” Caladrius continued. “What NEWTs is Mr Snape taking?”   
  
“Severus?” Slughorn patted his stomach uncomfortably. He had recently come to the conclusion that Snape’s cruelty, anger and anti-social tendencies disqualified him from achieving great success in any honourable field. What he might be successful at, Slughorn knew only too well, but he was anxious to appear neutral in the struggle between Dumbledore and Voldemort, at least until taking sides could no longer be avoided.  “Potions, Transfiguration, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Charms and Herbology, I believe.”   
  
“He’s exceptional at all of them, I suppose?”   
  
Slughorn shrugged. “Recently, he seems to have been suffering from a lapse in concentration. I daresay it’s a girl or something of that sort…” He paused, looking at his friend (who was staring, as usual, two inches to the left of him). “I say, why are you interested, Caladrius? There’s nothing… untoward… in store for him?”   
  
Caladrius smiled. “I’m happy to say I’ve no idea. I’ve never been alone with him, you see.”   
  
Slughorn relaxed slightly. “Terrible affliction…” he muttered awkwardly.   
  
Caladrius sipped his tea in silence. “And Miss Evans? I was very disappointed when I discovered that she wouldn’t be taking a NEWT in Divination. Though I understand she wants to be a Healer, so naturally her timetable would be a bit full.”   
  
Slughorn looked pained. He liked nothing better than enthusing about Lily’s talents but he had never introduced her to, or discussed her with, Caladrius before. If he were to discover anything uncomfortable about _her_ future…      
  
“Yes, that’s right,” he said hurriedly. “You do have Margot Holloway in your class, I believe. She’s exceptionally intelligent.”   
  
Caladrius did not seem to have heard him. He ran a hand through his wispy white hair, as though trying to calm himself, and then said suddenly: “Horace…”   
  
Professor Slughorn jumped, as though Caladrius had prodded him. “Oh, no,” he said, holding up his hands, “stop right there, my boy… I don’t want to… are you saying that…? There’s no reason to burden _me_ with…” he trailed off miserably.    
  
“You must have _some_ influence over her,” Caladrius said urgently.   
  
Slughorn stared at him, horrified. For a moment, he looked very small, lost and forlorn. There could be only one reason for the Divination teacher’s sudden interest in Lily. “But she’s not in any danger, is she?” he asked, his voice pleading.   
  
“It probably won’t do any good, but if you could just talk to her…”  
  
“I thought you said you couldn’t change it.” Slughorn’s tone was wretched now. “And that _trying_ to change it only makes it worse.”   
  
“Yes, if _I_ try to change it, it does get worse. But _you_ , Horace…”   
  
“How soon will -?” Slughorn stopped himself. His grey eyes suddenly hardened. “Get out,” he said.  
  
Caladrius had no objection. It had been a stupid idea, anyway. The result of desperation. He was rather surprised at himself for suggesting it.       
  
He went to stand at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, relishing the cool, damp-smelling solitude, away from the suffocating press of human bodies. He liked to be around trees and animals, because he was never troubled with visions about them. It was this desire of soaring away from his problems that had influenced his desire to become a bird in his Animagus transformation. This, however, had gone badly wrong (a circumstance which he could only have foreseen if the complications had been fatal, and they were not).   
  
He leaned against a tree and shut his eyes. All was silent in his head. When he was in the castle, he could feel the weight of the future on his shoulders, like a fat little child, much too old to sit on shoulders, screeching and dribbling in his ear. But here, for all he knew, there was no future. Here, for all he knew, everything would continue the same until the end of time. Creatures could live forever, or die the next second, without ever troubling Caladrius about it.  
  
He sat down on a patch of dead leaves that seemed to breathe, to rise and fall with the motion of the wind, and took out a book. _Death Omens: What To Do When You Know the Worst is Coming_. It had been a joking present from Professor Slughorn and, as was usual with Professor Slughorn’s jokes, it was in extremely bad taste.   
  
He was barely two pages in, reading about the fateful call of the Augurey, when a vision seemed to split his head open like a meat cleaver.     
  
It was a dark-skinned man, his face wrinkled, his skin tinder-dry and almost translucent, like papyrus. His mouth was so wrinkled that it looked as though it had been sewn up. But his eyes were youthful, black and glittering. His black ponytail was streaked with grey, and hung with the accumulated dust and spider-webs of ages. Caladrius could hear cracking sinews, the rustle of skin, the dry gurgle of sound being forced through desiccated vocal cords.     
  
Caladrius snapped back into consciousness and looked around, his breath catching in his throat. He was starting to feel very frightened now. There was nobody around him.   
  
He squinted into the trees desperately. This frail old man whose death he was now witnessing must be here somewhere, perhaps not an old man at the moment, but a young school-boy, with those same bright black eyes, glittering like the night sky.  
  
The thought was chilling. He knew he should be glad that any of his pupils would live to such an old age, but there was something so painful, so unwholesome in that image of decrepitude, that he couldn’t wish it on anyone.    
  
“Hominum Revelio,” he shouted, waving his wand over his head.   
  
Nothing happened. There was nobody here. But how was that possible?  
  
Caladrius lit his wand and directed its beam of light between the trees. A disillusionment charm or an invisibility cloak would have been detected by the Hominum Revelio spell.   
  
Could it be that the creature whose death he was watching was not a human? Magical creatures such as House Elves or Centaurs were undetectable by the Hominum Revelio spell. The latter seemed most likely, though he couldn’t remember seeing a horse’s body beneath the old man’s torso. Perhaps there was an ancient centaur lurking in the trees nearby, the grandfather of his tribe, his vitality (so perfectly captured in those eyes) imprisoned within a cracked, broken body.      
  
“Who’s there?” he called. His heart was pounding in his throat. Why was he so frightened?  
  
Only the echo of his own voice came back to him. The forest stirred - leaves rustled, branches creaked, there were a thousand unidentifiable scurryings, but these were common sounds and seemed in harmony with one another. There was no jarring note to identify somebody or something who shouldn’t be there.  
  
Caladrius searched the trees for another fifteen minutes, his skin prickling all the time. The vision re-occurred twice, but still, he could not find the creature who had inspired it. Finally, he directed his footsteps back up to the castle.   
  
Being horrified was a common enough experience for Caladrius, but he had never before been horrified and intrigued. The reason for his horror was usually all too obvious.   
  
He decided to consult Professor Dumbledore.           
  
  
“What can I do for you, Henry?”  
  
Caladrius sat down in front of Dumbledore’s desk, his throat still taut with fear. “I have seen a death without being near anybody,” he said.   
  
“You are quite sure you were alone?” Dumbledore asked.     
  
Caladrius nodded breathlessly. Dumbledore’s presence was always calming. The sound of that gentle, dignified voice saying “Severus, please,” was, in comparison with the screams and pleadings that usually filled up Caladrius’ head, a momentous relief.     
  
“And whose death do you think it was?” Dumbledore asked mildly, as though they were discussing the weather.    
  
“I don’t know,” Caladrius breathed. “An old man, very old, covered in dust and cobwebs, with black hair and eyes. But that’s only what he looked like at the moment of his death. He could be any age now.”   
  
“Intriguing,” Dumbledore said, but it was obvious that he could say no more. Even Caladrius had to admit that the description was feeble.   
  
“And have you never experienced a vision without someone at hand to inspire it? Forgive the impertinence of the question, and by no means do I wish you to go into details, but what about your own death? You must be alone when you see that.”   
  
“Yes, but that’s the only exception, and I’ve seen that a hundred times before. There isn’t an old man anywhere in sight.”   
  
“That’s unfortunate,” Dumbledore said heavily. For the first time, his voice sounded weary.   
  
Caladrius was so surprised, he almost looked directly into Dumbledore’s eyes, but he restrained himself. He heard again the soft “Severus, please…” It passed over him like a cool hand across his brow.   
  
Dumbledore cleared his throat, as if he suspected the train of Caladrius’ thoughts. Well, of course, thought Caladrius, he _would_.             
  
“It is unusual, certainly, for your visions to be taking a different course. But we must remember, Henry, that there has never been anyone like you. With regard to your visions, I’m afraid we have no basis for comparison.”   
  
Caladrius, unable to look directly into Dumbledore’s eyes, wasn’t aware of the penetrating look he was now being given, but he still squirmed.    
  
“But - forgive me - your visions have a very limited scope,” Dumbledore went on. “You can see only the moment of a person’s death. It is little wonder that you do not see the best of people. I do not know - I could never imagine - what it must be like to see what you see, Henry, but I would wish you to bear in mind that you are not being given the whole story. Death is not all pain and anguish. You do not see its consequences, Henry, or its consolations.”   
  
Caladrius gazed impassively at Dumbledore’s left ear. “The dead can experience neither consequence nor consolation,” he said.    
  
“Yes, but death does not affect the dead so much as it affects the living.”   
  
Caladrius laughed. “The cessation of all thought and feeling, the loss of everything you ever were, everything you ever cared about… You think that’s better than the grief of those who are left behind?”   
  
“You are better qualified to answer that question than anyone else I have ever met. Tell me, would you rather have died at an early age than led the life of constant grief that your visions have entitled you to?”  
Caladrius said nothing.   
  
Dumbledore’s voice was kindly when he went on. “Your sympathy is leading you astray, Henry. You are living proof that there are worse things than death. Therefore, take comfort in the fact that the subjects of your visions do not suffer as you do.”       
  
“As an end to pain,” Caladrius said slowly, “I can see that death is sometimes desirable. But that’s all the praise I’m prepared to give it.”  
  
Dumbledore smiled. “Well, that’s better than nothing. Excuse my lectures, Henry, they are the privilege of age.”  
  
“And of being my employer,” Caladrius added.  
  
“Believe me,” Dumbledore replied, “you are not contractually obliged to listen to my speeches. Spread the word amongst the staff, by all means. I can abuse your patience, but I would never abuse my own position.”  
  
Caladrius left Dumbledore’s office, feeling both soothed and aggravated. As so often when he had no distractions, he found himself thinking about Lily’s death. He could recall the vision so clearly - he saw her face, eloquent with despair, as she pleaded with Voldemort to spare her child. He saw her twisting her arms around the bars of the cot she was shielding, so that, if Voldemort tried to push her away, he might succeed in breaking her wrists, but she would stay exactly where she was. There had been a mobile above the cot, dangling little painted planets, rockets and stars. He saw it rocking as the rush of green light sped towards her, lifted her hair back off her shoulders, robbed her of life in a breath. He saw her crumple to the floor.  
  
He had seen much more horrific deaths, of course. Much slower ones, too. In fact, he wasn’t sure why this one bothered him so much.            
  
Everything was pain and suffering, everywhere he looked. He could not alter events for the better, he could not buy her more time, but perhaps he could buy her less pain.   
  
Caladrius decided to see whether he could alter events for the worse.


	37. The Plan

Slughorn examined the ladder that lead up to the Divination Tower with a dubious frown. It was made of rickety wood, and he would have been the first to admit that he was a somewhat full-figured gentleman. If he had been a less accomplished wizard, he would probably have lost some weight in the castle - with its ornately twisted and remorselessly steep staircases. But Slughorn scorned to exert himself if there was a magical alternative and, for a man of his talents, there always was.   
  
This visit was inconvenience enough. He did not want to have anything to do with rickety ladders.   
  
Accordingly, Slughorn cracked his knuckles, raised his wand and muttered: “Levicorpus.” As though there were a platform underneath his feet rising steadily upwards, he hovered in a dignified manner towards the entrance to the Divination classroom, idly checking his pocket-watch and noticing that it was late. If he hadn’t known that the Divination teacher was a chronic insomniac, he would have felt more than a little sheepish about this visit.    
  
He had seen students use the Levicorpus Charm in the school grounds, but they controlled it poorly. Well, they probably weren’t trying, Slughorn conceded fairly. Given that they were always using the charm to hurt or humiliate others, gusto mattered so much more than accuracy. He understood why Poppy Pomfrey was so world-weary. She had probably seen a thousand young spirits crushed, for no other reason than that their enemies were bored.   
  
Slughorn, on the other hand, valued ingenuity, whether it was kind or cruel. There was no disillusioning him. He could only deplore his students’ lack of subtlety when they harmed others, because they never harmed anonymously, or by increments, the way Slughorn would have done.   
  
He hovered through the open hatchway and found the Divination Professor next to the open window, holding a cup of tea poised before his lips, and looking fervently into the middle distance, only blinking occasionally when the rain dripped into his eyes.    
  
This was not an unusual pose in which to encounter Professor Caladrius. Slughorn simply assumed that he was in the grip of one of his visions, and cleared his throat awkwardly, as though loath to interrupt.  
  
“I say, Henry, m’boy?” he asked tentatively. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About Li - about Miss Evans.”   
  
“Yes?” Caladrius asked. His voice was quite steady, but he did not turn from his contemplation of the darkening sky.   
  
“I’d like to help, if I may,” Slughorn mumbled.    
  
“You mean help me or help her?” Caladrius asked calmly.  
  
“Well, both, of course,” Slughorn muttered uncomfortably. “But chiefly her.” His voice hardened a little as he went on: “I still think it was rather cruel of you to drag me into it, but now that I know… well, as my mother used to say, if you’re going to get wet, you might as well go swimming.”   
  
For the first time, Caladrius looked at him - the little, round, abashed Potions master, staring disconsolately at his velvet shoes.   
  
“I don’t want anything to happen to her,” Slughorn added wretchedly. “Mind, I don’t want you to run away with the idea that I think it’s _possible_ to help her. You’ve never been able to alter the horrible events you foresee before.”   
  
Caladrius waved his hand dismissively. “I’ve been able to alter the details, just not the outcome. If I interfere, they might die in a different way, but always at the same time. Its as though death won’t be cheated of its victims. But I can do it, Horace,” he said, his eyes suddenly shining. “For once in my life, I’m gong to beat him.”  
  
“Beat death?” Slughorn enquired, frowning.   
  
Caladrius smiled; it was wider than his usual smiles and looked oddly fixed. “I’m glad you came, Horace. I think I’ve had a break-through.”   
  
“Oh, yes?” said Slughorn cautiously.   
  
“Yes.” Caladrius put his arm round the Potion master’s shoulders, and steered him into a chair. “You see, all these years, I’ve been trying to change the moment of a person’s death, because that’s all I had to work with; it’s all I could see. But, now I realize, it’s little wonder you can’t divert the course of events when they’ve had an opportunity to gather so much momentum. If you try to stop a run-away train from going over a cliff, it’s still going to crash. I need to work backwards. I need to find the seeds of Lily’s fate and stop them from germinating.”   
  
Slughorn paused. There was a look in Caladrius’ hard, yellow eyes that he had never seen there before. His face was pale and had a feverish kind of sheen.    
  
“But how are you going to do that?” he asked. “You’re working blind here. You can only see the result, not the causes.”   
  
“I can work it out,” Caladrius insisted. “In the one moment I’ve got, there are clues everywhere. Besides, I’ve seen other deaths that are connected with hers - horrific little snap-shot pictures of her life, as short and full of grief as it will be. I have a few pieces of the jigsaw - at least enough to take a guess at what the picture might be.”    
  
“Who’s this man that Dumbledore says you saw die in the Forbidden Forest?” Slughorn asked, suddenly doubting Caladrius’ sanity and wondering why he had never doubted it before. It was because Dumbledore trusted the man, he supposed. Somehow, Slughorn had never entertained the notion that Dumbledore could be deceived in someone.    
  
“I don’t know,” Caladrius muttered dismissively. “Listen, will you? Lily dies trying - ,”   
  
Slughorn held up a hand, wincing. “No details, please. Just tell me what I need to do. I don’t need to know why I’m doing it.”   
  
“Alright,” Caladrius back-tracked a little, his eyes still shining with that worrying enthusiasm. “We’ve got to stop her from falling in love with James Potter.”   
  
“With _Potter_?”   
  
“That’s right.”   
  
“But she hates Potter.”   
  
Caladrius ran a hand through his wispy white hair distractedly. “Are you going to help me or not?”   
  
Slughorn sighed heavily. “Dumbledore would not approve of this, you know.”   
  
“He tries to prevent deaths all the time.”   
  
“Yes, but he doesn’t have foreknowledge that they’re supposed to happen. I mean, perhaps something good comes of her death…”   
  
“How good would it have to be to justify her loss?” Caladrius asked quickly.    
  
Slughorn sighed. “Pretty damned good,” he admitted.    
  
“Exactly. Forget about causality, Horace. As you say, we’re working blind. We can’t know what will result from our actions, so we’ve just got to do the best we can with the morality we’ve got.”   
  
“How are we to stop her from falling in love with Potter?” Slughorn asked resignedly.    
  
“We’ll have to get her to marry someone else.”   
  
“Who?”   
  
“Someone who will keep her as far as possible from James Potter. Who does Potter hate more than anyone else in the world?”   
  
“Severus Snape, I suppose.”   
  
Caladrius paused. Her heard Dumbledore’s weary voice again, whispering: ‘Severus, please…’ at the top of the Astronomy Tower, right before his death. Could he really set Lily up with Dumbledore’s murderer? Well, he was desperate enough to try anything. And he needed the rift between Lily and Potter to be unbridgeable.   
  
At any rate, if he changed Lily’s fate, perhaps Dumbledore’s would change too. How could somebody who had Lily’s gentle influence murder anyone? Perhaps everything would change. He couldn’t trust his visions anymore, only his instincts.   
  
“Right,” he said at last, clapping his hands, as though to dispel his doubts. “Get them together somehow. Detention, or something. I’ll do the rest.”   
  
“Detention?” Slughorn spluttered. “They’re model students!”   
  
Caladrius put his hand on Slughorn’s shoulder. “You’ll think of something, Horace. Just make sure they’re together on Friday night.”   
  
“What… er… what are you going to do?”   
  
Caladrius smiled grimly. “Trust me. You don’t want to be in on this.” When he saw Slughorn continue to look dubious, he added: “It’s better than her death, Horace.”   
  
“Lots of things are. That still doesn’t make them right.”   
  
Caladrius blinked. “I never thought I’d meet an idealistic Slytherin.”   
  
“Nor I a Machiavellian Gryffindor.”   
  
“What does it matter if we get our hands a little dirty, Horace?” Caladrius asked urgently. “We’re old men. The important thing is to ensure that this young woman has a life to lead.”  
  
Slughorn paused, his moustache ruffling pensively as he exhaled. “Very well,” he said. “Friday at eight. They’ll be in the main Potions dungeon.”    
  
Caladrius grinned. “You won’t regret this.”   
  
“You’ve foreseen that, have you?” Slughorn asked irritably.    
  
“No.”   
  
“Well, shut up, then.”   
  
Caladrius just grinned at him; nothing could dispel his wild, feverish happiness. He hadn’t realised it, because it sounded crazy, but he’d always felt persecuted by a malicious universe; he’d always felt that some sadistic deity - fate, or death or God or whoever - had shown him visions of horror and then denied him the opportunity to change them. The world had taunted him with knowledge and then made that knowledge useless. But just once, just once in his life, he was going to outwit his captors; he could feel it. Even if he had to kill Lily himself, he would ensure that she didn’t suffer the way he had seen her suffer - that she didn’t feel the grief of separation from her husband and son, the terror of that dark, merciless figure standing in the bedroom doorway, the ignominy of all that pleading. He was not going to let it happen. She would live a long life or die swiftly. These were the best things that could be hoped for, as far as Caladrius was concerned.


	38. Furious Calm

Severus stared up at the canopy of his four-poster bed (green hangings, for Slytherin, though the darkness had swallowed the colour and all the rest of the world, for all he knew, or cared).   
  
A deeper shade of darkness prevailed in these dungeon dormitories than anywhere else in the castle. It was textured, palpable. He breathed it in like smoke; it was in his lungs, and now his blood. It strengthened him. It would endure long after every light in the world went out.     
  
He was breathing very deeply, and seemed sunk in that state of dangerous calm that often caught him in moments of extreme pain or anger. He remembered lying in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, in his room in Spinner’s End, listening to his parents arguing, wondering vaguely when they stopped to draw breath. He couldn’t understand, then, why they didn’t get tired. He was tired, after all; even listening to them was exhausting. But hatred sustained them, and hatred didn’t need rest. Hatred disdained rest. He understood that now.   
  
He had learned to hypnotise himself into this state of perfect calm when his anger built to a crescendo. It was as though he had blacked out, except that his eyes were open, and dim thoughts crept sluggishly and repetitively across the otherwise perfect stillness in his head.   
  
The general gist of them was that he had to kill James Potter. And this time, no horrible images occurred to him; he didn’t see Potter’s hands slipping the straps of Lily’s dress off her shoulders. He just knew with perfect certainty that this state of affairs could not continue. He supposed that was why his parents had shouted at each other incessantly. When you knew that you couldn’t bear the world to stay the way it was, you wouldn’t rest, you would shout until your vocal cords were in tatters, because there was nothing else to be done.       
  
James Potter had had everything he had ever wanted, and now he had Lily. Severus couldn’t bear it. And if the whole world had to end, if the effort had to kill him, this could not go on.   
  
There was nothing behind these thoughts but cold, unflinching certainty. They couldn’t be argued with.   
  
He would need Regulus Black, and a very long length of rope.


	39. Full Fathom Five

The Lake in the Hogwarts Grounds was churning with agitation. The wind was skimming off it, spraying the foamy black water onto the bank. Narcissa was getting soaked, but she was too miserable to care. Above the howling of the wind, she could hear her grandmother’s voice, proceeding from the cool marble picture frame in her hand:   
  
“You should be in your dormitory, making yourself look beautiful, grand-daughter. How do you expect to enthrall powerful men if you look as though you’ve been dragged through a dragon’s nest backwards?”  
  
Narcissa didn’t answer immediately. She was hot and agitated, and the spray from the lake was blissfully cool as it dappled her face. It was very unlike her to be anxious. The world had never delivered anything to vex her before – except for Malfoy sleeping with her sister. And even that, though painful, had caused her to marvel at Malfoy’s bad taste, rather than suspect herself of having inferior charms. Still, she knew she had to reply: her grandmother was an awe-inspiring creature.   
  
“You said Severus was imaginative enough to want anyone,” she murmured resentfully, looking up at the lighted windows of the castle, and their warped reflections in the black water. The lake looked gilded – as though little squares of wrinkled gold foil had been rubbed onto its surface. “Surely he could want a woman who’s been dragged through a dragon’s nest backwards, if he had a mind to?”   
  
“I daresay he could, if you were the best on offer to tempt him, but there are other women, with equal wealth and blood, who take better care of their appearance.”   
  
Narcissa knew that this wasn’t true, but she wasn’t brave enough to contradict her grandmother.    
  
“You mark my words,” Claudia Black went on, “there will be others who have noticed his talent and ambition.”   
  
“I’ve never seen any,” Narcissa replied. “Most girls shudder whenever he goes near them.”  
  
“Then they are not as perceptive as you, are they?”   
  
Narcissa didn’t answer. Her doubts were creasing her forehead in what she was sure was a most unflattering way, but she was too heavy-hearted to care. What had started out as a trivial worry about losing Malfoy had turned into a strangling fear of hurting Malfoy.   
  
She didn’t think it would be wrong – she had no concept of doing wrong: she was the most beautiful daughter of the House of Black; rules of right and wrong didn’t apply to her. She just knew that she had a profound desire to spare Malfoy any pain. It was bewildering: she wasn’t even necessarily going to hurt him. He might never find out about Severus. She could do this without hurting anyone. She could break Severus’ intolerable pride: make him lose that expression of sneering indifference, if only for a moment.   
  
She would never doubt herself again if she could conquer Severus – because he had brought her close to doubting her own charms, when he’d refused her. If she could make Severus beg for her body, she would know that her beauty was proof against any amount of cleverness, dark magic, anger or hatred. She would know that she could survive in this world – because, for a woman with no real talents, she wanted a lot out of life. Perhaps she could even try to seduce the Dark Lord: they said he didn’t notice beauty, but Narcissa couldn’t believe it. Dark Magic sharpened carnal appetites, in her experience; it made your soul creep into your skin, until the only joy you could feel was through physical pleasure.   
  
Narcissa had seen this in the men of her family. It was why their wives had always been able to control and manipulate them. Appeal to people’s appetites, and you would never go hungry.    
  
And Malfoy had slept with her sister. He wasn’t exactly an innocent victim in all this – nor had he acted like one when he’d kidnapped her and imprisoned her in the oubliette.   
  
But he had been so… exciting. She had always seen him as a calm, controlled, sneering puritan before: she had heard stories about his wild, hedonistic youth – seducing teachers and experimenting with potions that had been banned by the Ministry for their dangerous and addictive properties – there were stories that he’d even poisoned Filch’s cat for a bet, and buried it in the Forbidden Forest. These days, however, Malfoy dressed soberly and disapproved of everything, from Floo Powder to the Weird Sisters. Everything was an evil innovation that flouted wizard tradition and slapped his ancestors in the face.   
  
But, in the oubliette, he’d been different. He had been revolutionary.   
  
It was so hard! Narcissa knew she didn’t have to choose; she didn’t have to compromise; she could have Severus and Lucius; she could have respectability and power, but, tonight, she didn’t want either of those things. For the first time in her life, she wanted love.   
  
She had never needed it before: money and respect could supply its place, for a time, but tonight, she had a wild, unreasonable urge to be vulnerable, to be in danger, to depend on someone completely. How ridiculous of her. How unlike any of the women in her family! They had never held power or public office themselves – but they had always been in complete control of their influential, dim-witted husbands. Her great grandmother had been wife to the Minister for Magic, and had practically ruled the wizarding world for twenty years, from behind the scenes, without any vulgarity or show.   
  
Narcissa had spent the whole day mirror-gazing, in an effort to hypnotize herself into that state in which she could hear the whisperings of her noble blood, desperately hoping that they would say something to contradict her grandmother.   
  
But every rule of sense and reason agreed with her. Severus would be powerful. He was destined for great things, and he could take Narcissa along for the ride, if she could manage to sink her hooks into him.   
  
“Now, go inside and get ready, my girl,” said Claudia. “Don’t waste the gifts that nature gave you. Normally, a woman would have to drink the blood of a baby unicorn to get skin that soft. Now, use a Luxus Charm to make your cheeks glow, and dragon’s blood to make your lips full and red – and put on your rain-drop earrings, and that green eye-shadow made from powdered dragon-scales. That looked good on you.”   
  
“Oh God, I don’t want any of it,” Narcissa gasped, horrified with herself.   
  
“What?”   
  
“I don’t want to be some sort of prize for the rich and powerful. I don’t want to be beautiful.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“It’s not real, any of it! Luxus Charms, dragon’s blood, Billywig potions, hemlock perfumes. Who’s going to love me when I take them off?”   
  
“May I remind you that Malfoy only loves you because of one of these potions?” Claudia asked shrewdly.   
  
“He said he loved me before - ,”   
  
“When he was sleeping with Bellatrix?”   
  
Narcissa fell silent.   
  
“Beauty is all that nature gave you, my girl,” Claudia said, in what she evidently thought was a kindly tone. “I’m family, so I can say these things to you. Normally, a woman of your incurable laziness and unnatural stupidity wouldn’t have a chance of getting anywhere in li - ,”   
  
But she never got to finish, because Narcissa hurled her picture into the lake.   
  
For about ten minutes, she stood frozen on the edge of the black water, horrified with what she’d done. The lake didn’t seem to like Claudia Black. Its rippling and churning only increased as the picture frame dropped into it.  
  
Narcissa had never, ever defied her family before. Her family was her life. It was the source of all her pride, all her inspiration, all her confidence. She wasn’t impetuous or dramatic, like Bella. She never did anything in anger, except torment mud-bloods, and that hardly counted, as far as she was concerned.    
  
She was lost, now. Moving stiffly, she made her way back to her dormitory and stared into the mirrors on top of her dressing table. But she couldn’t sink into her hypnotized state. The promptings of her noble blood were silent. The palm of her hand felt light and empty, without the cool weight of her grandmother’s picture frame nestling in it. She felt utterly alone.   
  
And it begged the question: if she didn’t want to be beautiful, what exactly did she want to be?   
  
  
She got dressed up, simply because she had no idea what else to do. When in doubt, Narcissa put on make-up and combed her hair. She dusted her eye-lids with green eye-shadow made from powdered dragon scales; she put on a silk night-dress that was roughly the same shade as her ice-white skin.  
  
It was the last word in luxury: Arabian silk, trimmed with lace, and studded here and there with glimmering, water-coloured crystals. It was not really to Narcissa’s tastes – because, on the whole, she liked things to look simple and elegant. She believed that her body was the greatest asset, and any ornamentation that distracted from it was doing more harm than good.   
  
But she wanted to impress Severus with her wealth, as well as her looks. She wanted to be awe-inspiring, not simply pretty. With a richer man, she wouldn’t have bothered but, the problem was, when all the trappings of wealth and luxury were cast off, pure-bloods tended to look the same as half-bloods (well, _she_ didn’t; she would always be superior: she had been constructed to a superior plan – but half-bloods like Severus, without their drab, second-hand robes to mark their inferior blood-status, could look like anyone.)   
  
She wanted some markers, some signifiers, of class that would keep him in his place, because nakedness was the ultimate leveler.   
  
When he came in, she saw him first in the mirrors over her dressing-table: he looked pale and breathless, and was blinking as though in a bright light. Narcissa was used to having this effect on people – but never on Severus. He normally looked at her as though she was an unwashed House Elf, scrabbling around in the dust.   
  
Narcissa didn’t turn away from her mirrors at once: she didn’t want to seem too eager: in fact, she could hardly have felt any _less_ eager, but she wouldn’t betray it. She was utterly miserable. The fear of hurting Malfoy had been beating her around the head all evening, but she didn’t know how to get out of this.   
  
Severus was powerful, terrifying and disdainful. Her ambition and pride were extremely drawn to him. Just not her heart.   
  
Still, he didn’t look so very powerful, terrifying and disdainful at the moment. In fact, he looked as though he was having an asthma attack.   
  
“Severus…” she murmured, biting her lip.   
  
“Yes?” he breathed.    
  
“Do you think we could just… talk?”   
  
“Talk?” Snape’s voice was suddenly leaden.   
  
“Yes… it’s just… I’ve been thinking about Malfoy.”   
  
The hook-nosed half-blood just stared at her. His mouth was hanging open. “Malfoy?”   
  
“I think… I would rather be with Malfoy,” she said, wincing in anticipation of the effect these words would cause. She wished he would do something other than echo her like a concussed parrot.   
  
“You’d rather…?”   
  
Narcissa started to get impatient. He must be leading up to some kind of savagely sarcastic put-down, and she wasn’t going to wait for it. “Yes, Malfoy, alright? He’s a pure-blood, and he’s handsome, and he loves me, and he’s… exciting.”  
  
Severus seemed to come back to his senses, though his mouth was still hanging open. “You mean it?” he whispered. “I can’t believe it…”    
  
“I’m sorry.”   
  
“You’re unbelievable.”   
  
“I _said_ I was sorry,” she added defensively.    
  
“I’m so happy…” he muttered. Then he blushed and added, “you know… for him.”   
  
Narcissa raised her eyebrows. Severus was being… nice. She knew he hadn’t wanted her in the first place, but she hadn’t expected this level of understanding from a teenage-boy who was being told that he wasn’t handsome enough, noble enough, or exciting enough, to get the girl.  
  
But perhaps that was the only way you ever got on with Severus Snape: by being honest with him, without any posing or self-importance or hollow gestures. Certainly, the mudblood had never had any of those.    
  
She turned round to face him for the first time, allowing her haughty restraint to be replaced by a girlish smile.   
  
“Will you tell me about him?” she whispered. Her grey eyes were alight with the same enthusiasm they harboured when she was mixing cosmetics.  
  
“What do you want to know?” he asked, grinning as though he’d been Confunded.    
  
“Is it true that he sneaked Scarlet Women into Dumbledore’s Office, in an attempt to get him fired?”   
  
“Yes.”   
  
“Is it true that he seduced the Defence Against the Dark Arts Teacher in a broom cupboard?”   
  
“Yes,” Snape said hesitantly. “She was very ugly,” he added, “nothing like you...”  
  
But Narcissa batted away this compliment, eager to hear more of Malfoy’s debauchery.    
  
“Is it true that he poisoned Filch’s cat, and buried her in the Forbidden Forest, but Filch couldn’t live without her, so he brought her back from the dead using Voodoo Magic?”   
  
“Sure,” Snape said weakly. “Why not?”   
  
“Is it true that Malfoy knows the three Unforgettable Curses?”   
  
“There are only two,” he said happily. “They’re the opposite of the Unforgivable Curses – one causes pleasure, one instills self-confidence and independence – but there’s no magic that can restore life. There’s no antidote to the Avada Kedavra Curse.”   
  
“And… this spell that causes pleasure…?”   
  
“The Rapturus Charm?”   
  
“Right. Can he do that just… anywhere?”  
  
A smile was spreading irresistibly across Snape’s sallow face. “I’ll tell him you’re curious, next time I see him. _I_ can’t do it. He’s a much better wizard than me.”   
  
Narcissa was much too eager to be suspicious of this most uncharacteristic humility. “When will you see him again?” she asked.   
  
“I can see him tonight.”   
  
She looked stricken. “He’s not… here?”   
  
“No,” Snape replied swiftly. “But he can get back here, whenever you want to see him. How about tomorrow night?”   
  
“He’s going to hate me when the Amortentia wears off,” she muttered, looking down at her hands.    
  
“Oh, I can’t imagine him doing that.”  
  
“Do you think he’ll promise to marry me before… you know…”   
  
“I think he’ll promise anything.”    
  
Narcissa felt inexpressibly grateful to him. She had never had such a selfless friend. She was suddenly struck by the notion that he might want something in return.   
  
“I can pay you, of course,” she muttered, hoping that this wouldn’t insult him. He was a curious man, Severus Snape – dreadfully poor, but proud as an aristocrat – prouder than any wealthy pure-blood she had ever met.   
  
“I don’t want anything,” he said, still grinning stupidly.   
  
“I won’t tell anyone about the mudblood,” Narcissa murmured, in an uncharacteristic surge of generosity.    
  
Severus blinked. “Mudblood?”   
  
“The mudblood you kissed in the oubliette,” she whispered. “That Evans woman. In fact, I’ll try and persuade Bella not to kill her when she leaves school, if you like.”   
  
Severus was silent. “Yes…” he said eventually. “Why don’t you do that?”   
  
“Thank you for everything, Severus,” Narcissa muttered, pulling him into a jerky hug. She wasn’t used to showing affection this way. She wasn’t used to showing it at all. But she didn’t know how to deal with selfless people. She felt completely naked before them: they couldn’t be manipulated or exploited, they didn’t want sex or money; they were bewildering. A hug was all she felt qualified to give him.   
  
“Tomorrow night, then?” he asked eagerly, when she eventually (and very politely) prized his arms off her.   
  
“Yes,” she said. “But tell him he’s going to have to make the Unbreakable Vow not to kill me, first. And also,” she added, getting an idea, “he’s going to have to promise to be faithful to me all his life.”   
  
“Done and done,” Severus replied happily. “Anything else?”   
  
“Tell him I want to know about this Rapturus Charm,” she said.   
  
Snape kissed her. She hadn’t been expecting this, but, in a way, it was reassuring. Perhaps he was not as selfless as she had initially thought.   
  
“Sorry,” he said, pulling away from her. “I just didn’t know how to tell you how brilliant you are.”    
  
“You’re usually very good with words, Severus,” she replied reproachfully. “In fact, actions do not suit you.”    
  
“Sorry,” he said again, but he didn’t look it.   
  
“Goodnight, then?” Narcissa prompted coldly.   
  
He got up, gave her one last smile of luminous happiness (no expression had ever looked stranger on the face of Severus Snape), and left.


	40. The Descent, Part One

Lily needed to find Severus, but he wasn’t in any of his usual haunts. She checked the dungeon classroom he used for studying (feeling all the time a weird sense of déjà vu), the library, and (accompanied by a fiercely protective Andromeda) the Slytherin common-room, but he was nowhere to be found. Why hadn’t she thought of talking to him before? Just talking to him, far away from any of his deranged friends, and from the merest suggestion of the word ‘Potter’. She was being unfair to him: he had scared her, with all the talk of dark magic, and mudbloods, and fitting in. She wasn’t going to let fear govern her perception of anybody. Fear was the enemy of all clear-thinking.   
  
She had been treating him like a spider: just terrified of what he was – terrified of his mere being – without ever giving him a chance to explain himself, or justify his actions. True, every time she tried to talk to him, somebody got hurt – in most cases, her – but that wasn’t his fault. He was surrounded by demented Slytherins all the time – sadists, spoilt princesses and congenital idiots – that lot would cause Mother Theresa to lose her temper.    
  
She was just making her way up to the Astronomy Tower when Professor Caladrius popped his head out of an empty classroom and motioned her inside.   
  
Lily had learned to stay at least six feet away from him on these occasions, so she crept around the wall and sat on a desk at the back of the classroom, smiling apologetically. She liked Professor Caladrius. He had so much to cope with that he never thought of being dishonest: he never flattered, exaggerated or bragged. And she could lose herself in sympathy for him. He made her own problems disappear.   
  
“I have a solution to the nightmares you’ve been having, Miss Evans,” he said, smiling his weary, distracted smile.   
  
He didn’t wait for Lily to reply, but threw her what looked like a wrist-watch. Lily caught it and peered at it warily. Six years in the magical world had taught her that nothing was ever what it appeared to be, but this object was doing its best to prove her wrong. It looked like a compass. It had a glass face, and a thin, trembling black needle, whirring round an ivory dial. North, South, East and West were painted on it. And, right in the middle, over the axis on which the needle swung, there was a symbol carved into the glass – crudely, it seemed to Lily. It looked like an Ancient Rune, but not one that she’d ever seen before. Attached to the glass contraption, there was a leather wrist-band.     
  
“A compass?” she asked.    
  
“In a manner of speaking,” said Professor Caladrius. “It is an Ideoscope.”   
  
“It shows you ideas?” asked Lily, who knew her Latin and Greek. It was either that or a device for detecting idiots.   
  
“It is a method of exchanging ideas,” Caladrius replied. “Now, I would like to assure you that this isn’t, as the muggles would say, passing the buck. Or rather, it is, but I’ve stuck lots of metaphorical post-it notes onto the buck, to aid the next person who receives it.”  
  
He was talking rapidly, his prematurely-lined face flushed with excitement. Lily gave him a crooked little smile.   
  
“Sir?”   
  
“What I mean to say is that I can’t stop your nightmares, but I can direct you to the person who can. You see, the Ideoscope points to them.”  
  
Lily stood still and turned on the spot experimentally. The trembling needle turned with her. “Then they’re either right above, or right below me,” she said thoughtfully.  
  
Caladrius passed his hand through his wispy hair again. Lily suddenly realized that he was looking strained. There were deep bags under his eyes, and his shoulders were drooping.   
  
“But it is not that simple,” he continued impatiently. “It doesn’t just point to the person who can stop your nightmares: the Ideoscope is one of a pair, and, when two people wear them, it constitutes a form of bonding spell.”   
  
“Like the Vinculus Charm?” Lily asked, without thinking.   
  
“Caladrius blinked. “Yes. A very obscure, very ancient, piece of magic, Miss Evans, I congratulate you.”   
  
Lily waved away his praise. She didn’t want to think about the Vinculus Charm.  
  
“You are familiar, I’m sure, with Claudia Black, and her theories of… I believe scholars euphemistically call it ‘Magical Storage’? I mean, her experimental theories on storing the symptoms of an ailment in an object – in her case, an innocent House Elf – so that the witch or wizard does not have to suffer them?”   
  
Lily wrinkled her nose. “Yes, sir.”   
  
“Well, this magic is similar, but infinitely more complex. It is an exchange, rather than a monopoly: an exchange of fears. It draws your anxieties, your worries, your nightmares – all of that neurotic poison – out of you, and it transmits them to the wearer of the other compass.”   
  
Lily raised her eyebrows. “This makes somebody else suffer my worries?” she asked slowly.   
  
“If by suffer, you mean ‘experience’, yes. If you mean ‘endure’, no,” he replied.   
  
Lily waited patiently for him to explain himself. She owed him that much. She was going to give him five minutes, and then she was going to start shouting.   
  
“They do not feel it,” he persisted. “Your worries – your nightmares – appear only as a stream of images on the face of the other compass. You see, exchanging your worries exorcises them, earths them, in a way that even muggles are aware of. Think how much better you feel when you confide in somebody else. This is merely a magical version, that doesn’t utilize words. You’re exchanging ideas. It is a form of psychic correspondence.”  
  
“Like writing long, complaining letters to someone?”   
  
“Precisely. You will never be aware of their troubles, save as a stream of images on the face of the compass. You will not be able to interpret them specifically, because they manifest themselves like dream images – they are often symbolic or surreal. But you do not feel them as anxieties, that is the point. The compass converts them into images, which cannot affect you in the way that feelings can: granted, they can generate negative feelings sometimes, but most wearers of Ideoscopes learn to ignore the images, I understand. And this exchange can deal with more than worries – it can draw pain out of you as well - ancient wizards used to use them as a form of magical Anaesthesia. All the best magic is collaborative, Lily.”     
  
“Who will wear the other compass?”   
  
“Someone who also has anxieties or nightmares that need to be drawn out of him – or her,” he added hurriedly. “You’ll never have to meet them.”   
  
“You’re sure they won’t feel anything?” Lily asked skeptically. “You’re sure my nightmares won’t make them feel scared or depressed?”   
  
“Absolutely,” Caladrius assured her. “Your nightmares will merely be a series of indecipherable images on the face of their compass.”  
  
“And you’re sure they’ll be indecipherable?” Lily asked anxiously. “Because I don’t like the idea of somebody else having a window into my dreams.”   
  
“Yes,” Caladrius said, “but, if it makes you feel any better, you’ll never meet the wearer of the other compass. I’ve sent it to a colleague in New Zealand.”   
  
“Oh,” said Lily, “that’s why the compass says they’re right below me?”   
  
“Quite.”   
  
“Then it’s got quite a long range, this thing?”   
  
“Magic of this kind knows nothing of distance.”   
  
“Sir?” Lily asked awkwardly. “Why doesn’t everybody use these things, if they’re as useful and as harmless as you say?”   
  
Caladrius smiled. “There’s no getting anything past you, is there, Miss Evans? They are very rare. Nobody knows how to make them anymore. I inherited my pair from my father – he was an Unspeakable – he worked in the Department of Mysteries. Ancient magical objects can do strange things, and we still don’t really understand why, so Unspeakables research them, in a controlled environment. I’m sorry to say that my father didn’t find out much about the Ideoscopes before he died.”     
  
“I can’t take this from you if it’s expensive, sir.”   
  
“I have no need of it, I assure you. My nightmares are of a kind that no amount of sharing can diminish.”   
  
Lily looked at the face of the compass. It was reassuringly blank. “When will it start to work?” she asked.   
  
“The instant you put it on, if my colleague is wearing his.” He faltered for a moment, obviously realizing that he had revealed his colleague’s gender, but he pushed on, running his hand through his fine, wispy hair again. “Do you have any other questions, Miss Evans?”     
  
Lily slipped the wrist-band over her hand and flexed her fingers experimentally. The Ideoscope hardly weighed anything at all. Its face was still blank, however. Mr. Mysterious in New Zealand was obviously not wearing his – or, at any rate, wasn’t currently having nightmares. She felt a tingling warmth in her wrist, under the band; she supposed this was the magic taking effect. It really was extraordinary.  
  
“Do the two wearers of the compass need to feel any kind of empathy for each other, sir? Like in healing magic?”   
  
“Nothing so specific,” he said, turning his back to her and staring out of the window at the darkening sky. “Since there is no necessity for them to meet, it is obviously unnecessary that they feel any particular empathy for one another. But I believe they need to have a certain… susceptibility for empathy, a certain predisposition towards kindness. And, given the nature of the magic, it is obviously requisite that they be good listeners.”   
  
He turned around for long enough to give her a distracted, thin-lipped smile. “Do not worry, Miss Evans. I have every confidence in my colleague – and, it goes without saying, in you. This will work.”  
  
“Thank you, sir.”   
  
For some reason, her thanks seemed to pain him, because he waved them away almost frantically. “Goodnight, Miss Evans.”   
  
“Goodnight, sir.”  
  
Caladrius waited for her footsteps to recede into the distance, and then made his way down the marble staircase, towards Slughorn’s office in the dungeons.   
  
His only doubt about the Ideoscope was whether Severus Snape was sufficiently empathetic for it to work. He had never met the boy, but from what he’d heard, he was angry, erratic, bitter and brilliant. The intelligence was encouraging, but it was by no means typical for intelligence and sympathy to go hand in hand. Still, Slytherins generally were good listeners, especially the penniless ones, simply because they needed to manipulate people in order to survive. There could be no manipulating people without listening to them.      
  
The Ideoscope was old magic. Centuries old, and generally frowned upon in the modern magical world, because it created an unbreakable, and often highly uncomfortable, bond between two people. Caladrius had decided that he couldn’t give Lily Amortentia – it was too unstable, too cruel, and much too deceitful. Amortentia victims were slaves to smoke and shadows. A one-sided attraction to a fantasy was not the long and happy future that Caladrius had envisioned for her. But the compass would give her something real – a real, palpable connection. He hadn’t been lying to her, it did draw misery and worries out of you, but also love. It fixed your heart on the person who wore the other compass. All your thoughts, desires, tenderness, would be pulled out of you and into him – you were practically lovers before you had even met.   
  
This meant, of course, that Severus Snape would get a great deal more love than he deserved, or was able to give back, from what Caladrius had seen of him. But it would be worth it to save Lily. Anyway, highly unreasonable as Severus Snape undoubtedly was, he was clever. He would see Lily for what she was: an angel. Nobody who had Lily’s love could continue to be undeserving of her. A generous, warm-hearted creature like her could reform anyone: if she bestowed her tenderness on a vampire, he would be guzzling grape juice and renouncing his nocturnal lifestyle within a week.    
  
Still, as long as she was alive. He needed her to fall in love with James Potter’s worst enemy – somebody who would keep her away from Potter, so that she would never marry him, and never have that baby that the Dark Lord was to become so obsessed with.   
  
Caladrius was starting to feel… fanatical… about this mission. He couldn’t stop thinking that his entire life had been building up to this moment – that, if he could save Lily, he wouldn’t be a twitchy, tortured waste of space anymore. He would be a hero. If he could save Lily, then all that suffering would have been _for_ something. Divine warnings, rather than divine punishment.  
  
He was just making his way to Slughorn’s office, to tell him that the plan had gone off without a hitch, when he heard a scream. He stopped in the dungeon corridor, looking at a door which he’d always assumed had led to a store-room or a broom-cupboard. But now, he could suddenly see that there was a rusted metal bolt on the outside of it.   
  
Why would a door have a bolt on the outside? Dumbledore didn’t have cells in his castle. He’d turned all the old prison-rooms into shiny new bathrooms, as soon as he had become Headmaster, informing his teachers that adequate toilet facilities were much better at encouraging good behavior than prison-cells.    
  
And there was screaming coming from it. It sounded echoey and distorted, but it was definitely a human voice, and in an advanced state of pain or distress, from the sound of it.   
  
Caladrius pulled back the bolt and peered inside. It was not, as he’d suspected, a broom-cupboard or a store-room, but the entrance to a long, stone corridor.   
  
He pursued the voice through tunnels that became cooler and more slippery as he walked: something was making a worrying crunching sound underneath his feet, and he directed his wand light to the floor, only to find a graveyard of rat and mouse skeletons half-buried in rubble. Some of the bones were larger, too. Perhaps a few pet cats had wandered down here, away from their owners, and become trapped. What could have killed them, he had no idea, but he quickened his footsteps towards the voice.   
  
He recognized it now. It was Lily’s. How she could have got down here so quickly was beyond him. Perhaps she had fallen from a higher floor.  
  
Suddenly, the tunnels broadened out into a vast room: his wand-light couldn’t penetrate very far into the darkness, but he was sure the room was big, because it had to accommodate so much noise. There was the rushing of water far below, but that was turned into a mere background rumble by the layer upon layer of echoes. It sounded like there was a whole Quidditch stadium in here, filled with muttering, whispering, laughing and jeering. Some of the voices sounded inhuman: he was sure there were growls and squawks amongst the rest. It was like some kind of hellish zoo, bristling with activity, but wrapped in darkness.  
  
Gradually, however, he made out Lily’s voice, and realized that all the others must have been distorted echoes of her. Except the squawking. There was definitely a bird of some kind nearby.   
  
There was a boy standing not far off, holding his wand in one hand and a glass bottle in the other. There was a flaming torch attached to the wall next to him – but the darkness was thick, and it resisted any attempt at illumination. The flickering fire-light just made the shadows mobile – they danced over the dripping cavern walls, over – were those skulls, set in alcoves carved into the stone? – giving the impression of rapid movement. The whole room seemed to be alive.   
  
Lily’s voice seemed to be coming from the glass bottle the boy was holding, echoing around the high-ceilinged cavern. Of course, thought Caladrius, a Vox Charm: you could capture somebody’s voice, if they had ever spoken up for you, and Lily must have spoken up for just about everybody during her time here. The nerve of that boy, using Lily’s kindness to trick teachers!     
  
“Termino,” the boy said, pointing his wand at the tunnel opening, through which Caladrius had entered. The Divination teacher turned to see a wall of bricks rising out of the floor, blocking off the doorway.   
  
He took out his wand and pointed it at the boy warily. “Who are you?”   
  
He was standing sufficiently far away to be spared any visions about the boy, mercifully, but there was something familiar about him. He seemed to have seen him in connection with somebody else’s death. Could it be Lily’s? No, he was always thinking about Lily’s death; he was starting to think that everything was connected with it: that it was some kind of terminus for conflicting realities, some kind of branching-off point, from which everything began. And all the years leading up to it were just a tedious prologue.   
  
The boy was hook-nosed and sallow-skinned. There was a hard look about his eyes and mouth – they were set in a permanent frown, furrowed with fierce unhappiness, as though they’d been carved out of rock, and then painted a curdled white. The eyes seemed to be the only places where the rock was bare and unadorned. They were sharp, black and pitiless.   
  
“It’s not important,” the boy said calmly.    
  
Caladrius realized that Regulus Black was standing beside the boy, fidgeting with his wand, his face set in an expression of nervous excitement.   
  
“Regulus, what is the meaning of this?”   
  
“You’re coming with us, sir,” said Regulus. “We’re taking you to the Dark Lord.”   
  
Ah. That was nice and comprehensive. Yes, they looked like the type who would try something like this: Regulus was always rhapsodizing about blood-purity and how much he admired the people who were prepared to stand up for it. He was foolish and ignorant – as soon as he realized what the Dark Lord was, and what he was prepared to do, he’d change his mind. Regulus, beneath the insanity, was a gentle-spirited creature.   
  
But the dark-eyed boy… well, he was slightly more worrying. He was holding his wand so steady. There was no air of excitement or desperation about him – just cold, unflinching certainty.     
  
Caladrius directed his wand chiefly at him.   
  
“I’m not going anywhere, boys,” he said firmly. “It’s time you stopped flirting with idiocy. You really think you want to be Death Eaters? You really think you could be killers? Don’t be foolish.”   
  
“Try to stop us,” said the dark-haired boy calmly.   
  
Caladrius decided to start off gently. They were still students, after all. “Expelliarmus!” he shouted, raising his wand towards the dark-eyed boy.    
  
Nothing happened. The boy’s wand remained resolutely in his hand, but he hadn’t cast a spell to block the Disarming, Caladrius was certain of it. He was even holding his wand loosely, casually, as though to mock him.   
  
Those black eyes were glittering with triumph and amusement, but his face remained hard and fixed.   
  
“Would you like to try again, sir?”   
  
“Stupefy!” Caladrius cried, not even giving him a chance to finish.  
  
Again, nothing happened.   
  
Foolishly, Caladrius looked down at his wand, wondering whether it had been swapped for one of those trick wands that turned into rubber chickens or canaries. No, it was his. He recognized the grooves and knots on it – the places where the varnish was flaking. He’d held it for thirty years, after all. Was the boy using an invisible Shield Charm? No. Something would have happened when he cast the stunning spell. A flash of red light or a rushing sound. You couldn’t mute magic.   
  
It was this place, it had to be. He looked around at the cavernous hall for the first time, noticing the skulls fixed in their little alcoves in the wall, the high ceiling lost in shadow, and the rushing of water far below.   
  
Oddly enough, it was that last detail that worried him.  
  
This place leads out of the castle, he thought.   
  
“Where are we?” he asked slowly, trying not to betray his fear, but the dark-haired boy was already smiling.   
  
“Very good,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “I was expecting it to take you much longer than that. But since you’ve proved so quick on the uptake, sir, let’s not waste any time with boasting. We’re not Gryffindors, you know.” He raised his wand and said, very slowly: “Imperio.”    
  
Caladrius’ face suddenly became blissfully blank – the worry-lines on his brow softened; his jaw slackened, and his shoulders drooped, arms hanging limply by his side. Even his wispy hair seemed to lose a little of its buoyancy – perhaps because it was imitating the lank, greasy hair of its new master.


	41. The Descent, Part Two

Severus felt a sickly, swooping joy in his stomach – a rush of adrenaline that was somewhere between nausea, vertigo, and excitement.   
  
All his life, he had felt powerless and persecuted: first by the violence and cruelty of muggles, and then by the arrogant, senseless showing-off of the people who ran things in the wizard world: demented, snooty, or big-headed pure-bloods, unfair teachers, and sneering politicians. They were always looking down on him because of his muggle background. They were always trying to take things away from him – what little he’d had in the first place.   
  
But now he was finally taking the reins. And it was easy. It was wonderful.   
  
If he could have put the Imperius Curse on Potter, or his father, he never would have felt miserable at all. He could have spared himself so much humiliation – and his mother so many bruises – if he’d only learned to do this earlier. Nobody would ever have dared disrespect him. He could have made Potter walk around with his pants on his head, or crash his broomstick into a cliff. He could have made his dad miss his mouth every time he went to take a drink. After a couple of months of getting whisky in your eye, even the most hardened alcoholic would probably put the bottle away and start paying attention to his family.    
  
The mad notion occurred to him that he could put everybody under the Imperius Curse all the time – steer the world just the way he wanted it to go, make his enemies humiliate themselves. He would spare Lily, because he hated to think of her fierce independence being pressed into anything – anyway, she wouldn’t be so exciting, if he always knew exactly what she was going to do. He loved her unpredictability.   
  
But he could make Dumbledore expel Potter and Black. He could make Bella gentle and Narcissa humble, and both of them respectful. He could make the Dark Lord take a more reasonable line on muggle-borns, especially beautiful, sweet-natured, red-haired ones.    
  
Severus flicked his wand to the left, and Caladrius began to walk forward, dragging his feet along the loose rubble that littered the cavern floor. It was difficult to get his motion steady, at first – he moved in a jerky, irresolute way, that Severus was sure would be very conspicuous, as soon as they got out in the open. But, after a while, he got the hang of it. The trick was to relax: not to force the orders on him, but present them as the most natural and reasonable option. Make the orders occur to him. It was all persuasion. It was all delicacy and subtlety. Only a Slytherin could have done it.  
  
He’d finally found something that he was better at than James Potter.    
  
Well, it made sense that somebody as miserable as Caladrius would succumb to the Imperius Curse easily. It was probably a rare treat to escape the horrors in his head.  
  
“How did you get the mudblood’s voice in that bottle?” Regulus asked, jarring Severus out of his reverie.   
  
“Vox Charm,” he replied shortly. “If someone has ever been your advocate, or your defender, you’ll always have their voice on your side, whenever you want it.”   
  
“Without their knowing it?”   
  
Severus shrugged. He hoped Lily _did_ know it. He wished she could see him now, finally standing up for himself. He hadn’t meant to use her voice, because it made him extremely gloomy, but she was the only one who’d ever stood up for him. His options were limited.   
  
“Can you make it say whatever you want?” Regulus asked.   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“Can you make her say ‘You really turn me on, Regulus’?”  
  
Snape flicked his wand at the bottle, and Lily’s voice proceeded from it, sharp and scornful: “You make me sick, Regulus.”   
  
Regulus smiled cheerfully. “Well, it was close. I’m sure you’re getting better.”  
  
Snape gave him a look that would have caused a more sensitive boy to cast around for the nearest escape route. Unfortunately, in the oubliette, that meant leaping off the edge of the abyss, through fifty feet of darkness, into a torrid river. Regulus, insensitive as he was, realized that escape was out of the question, and therefore thought it would be prudent to change the subject.    
  
“Did you tell Bella about the crotch-kicking curse?” he asked.   
  
“I might’ve.”   
  
Regulus rolled his eyes. “You’re not _supposed_ to tell girls about the crotch-kicking curse!” he exclaimed. “They don’t know what it’s like. They think it’s just like kicking you in the head or something: they don’t realize that it’s like kicking you in the soul.”   
  
Snape, who had been kicked in the soul many times before, thought that this comment was too spurious to merit a response. Instead, he asked:  
  
“Did she get Potter?”   
  
Regulus shook his head in exasperation. “If I say she did, it’ll make your day, won’t it? Joining the Dark Lord, outsmarting Dumbledore, kidnapping teachers – these things don’t really matter to you, do they? They’re just an interesting warm-up act before the main show of your life, the tormenting of James Potter.”   
  
“Well?” Snape asked, his voice cold and dangerous.   
  
Regulus relented. “Yeah, she got him,” he said, smiling slightly. “He’s in the Hospital Wing; my brother had to carry him there.”   
  
Snape laughed. Regulus had never seen him laugh before. It was quite a worrying sight. It was entirely mirthless; just a grimace of vindictive pleasure. Regulus suddenly began to feel the need to have his wand on his side.   
  
“So, how do you use magic in here?” he asked, as casually as possible.   
  
“You wouldn’t like it,” Snape said with a shrug.   
  
“You’re not even going to tell _me_?” Regulus asked accusingly.   
  
Snape smiled. “You’ll survive an hour as a muggle, Regulus. It’ll be good for you. A humbling experience.”   
  
“You know, this lack of trust is going to get you into trouble someday, Severus.”   
  
There was a hellish screeching from the tunnel opening that Severus had blocked up. He waved his wand at it absent-mindedly, and the bricks melted away. The Griffin bounded up to him, with every appearance of delight, and Snape patted its beak lazily, watching with great enjoyment as Regulus drew back in horror. “I don’t seem to be the one in trouble at the moment,” he said calmly. “Now, be quiet, like a good little muggle, Regulus – or I’ll set the Griffin on you.”   
  
Regulus backed away, into the cavern wall, with its carved shelves of skulls, and then jumped forward in horror.  
  
“What in the name of Merlin’s Y-Fronts are all these skulls doing here?” he asked irritably.    
  
“Dead people can’t hurt you,” said Severus. He paused, and then added. “At least, not unless there’s a living wizard nearby, to reanimate them. Either way, it’s the living one you need to watch out for.”   
  
Regulus, caught between a wall of skulls, and a blood-spattered Griffin, turned to Caladrius, as the only harmless thing in the room.   
  
“There’s something in his pocket,” Regulus said.   
  
Severus gave him a disgusted look. “We’re not thieves, Regulus.”   
  
“The Dark Lord might be interested.”   
  
“So let _him_ go through his pockets.”   
  
“It looks like one of those muggle portable clocks,” Regulus muttered, ignoring him, as usual.   
  
“A watch,” Snape said, closing his eyes in exhaustion.   
  
“Except it’s got your name on it.”   
  
Snape’s eyes snapped open. “What?”   
  
“Look.” Regulus threw him the little object. It looked like a compass on a watch-strap, with a trembling black needle that pointed back towards the castle’s interior. And, sure enough, scratched into the leather on the strap were the words Severus Snape.   
  
“It could be a dangerous magical object,” said Regulus hopefully, his eyes shining with that love of trouble that was so common to all his family. “Maybe we should get the Dark Lord to check it out.”   
  
“Leave it with me,” Snape said. He didn’t know why, but the thought of the Dark Lord prying into his private concerns made his flesh creep. It was be alright if he could get rid of Potter, but he couldn’t suppose that it would end there. You never retired from service as a Death Eater. And, once you were in his debt, you had to earn your way out.   
  
So, you’d rather just stay like this? a malicious little voice in his head asked scornfully. You’d rather watch Potter worm his way into Lily’s life, like some kind of burrowing parasite?   
  
Anyway, there was no going back now. The Griffin gave an affectionate squawk and nudged him. To Severus, the mud-gold feathers, matted with filth, and the blood-caked talons, were beautiful. His ticket to freedom. Suddenly, everything about this place was wonderful. No eye-scraping sunlight to make him conspicuous, and Dumbledore’s corrupt teachers, the ones who always favoured Potter, were completely in his power – were terrified of him. He’d seen the horror in Caladrius’ eyes, and it had crackled through him like electricity. Who needed love, when there was power? Who needed love, when there were dark curses, shallow bimbos and people who were terrified of you?   
  
From the first moment he’d arrived in the magical world, almost from the first moment he’d stepped onto Platform Nine and Three Quarters, he’d wished that he was the only wizard in the world. And now, here, he was. For a moment, he wished that he could live here – just him and Lily – and possibly his mother – away from all the taunting and prejudice, all the cruelty and injustice of the wizarding world.   
  
If this wasn’t meant to happen, why was it so easy? Why was he so good at it? If there was some kind of power, some kind of governor, who wanted you to show consideration for your fellow creatures, why did he make it so easy not to?  
  
Perhaps there was nothing in the universe except strength – patterns of influence, little conquests, everyday submissions, tactical retreats – perhaps every meeting between two people was a power struggle. Maybe every relationship, every conversation, was a battle for dominance. Maybe kindness was just another tactic. A risky one but, then, sometimes you had to take risks in war.   
  
Perhaps Lily was just a brilliant tactician, a guerilla general, laying ambushes of sweetness, just to break his spirit. Gratitude was crippling, after all. It made him so helpless.   
  
No, not Lily. Everyone else – fine – but not her. She was outside of the game; she was neutral, picking up the pieces of the combatants, and trying to put them back together.   
  
She was just concentrating on the wrong ones, that was all.     
  
He couldn’t believe he’d never realized that everything was about power. His parents had hated each other so much that he felt as though their hatred was built into his very cells – like they were fighting each other in every nerve, every blood-vessel, every organ – tearing him apart, from the inside out. Everything was war, even at the cellular level.     
  
And, now that he knew the truth, he felt connected to everything, as though the whole world existed on a web of magic, and you just had to know how to twitch a few threads, and you could make anything happen. Lily was on this web somewhere, too, already tied to him, and all he had to do was reel her in.   
  
All these petty distinctions between right and wrong seemed so inadequate when you saw the cords of power that connected everything. Power was fierce and beautiful, and it was the only connection between people – not love. Love could bounce right off people with a useless clatter, like gravel on a window-pane, but power couldn’t be resisted. Nobody could be indifferent to power. Power couldn’t fail to move you.   
  
The world was bigger than good or evil: trying to divide it up with the blunt knives of reason was a waste of time and energy – energy that you could be using to make your mark on the world.   
  
He was sinking into his Occlumency state; he could feel the numbing disdain closing over him like black water, but he relished it. It was so liberating, to realize that the world was full of pathetic, squabbling idiots, swarming around like insects, trying to devour each other, without ever realizing what they were doing.   
  
He wondered whether he could think of Lily and his mother like this. Were they the same as those hurrying, pathetic insects, struggling through the world like mosquitoes trapped in tree sap? Labouring in their own destruction, with their pointless feelings, their maddeningly-misplaced love?   
  
He couldn’t think about that – not now, not yet. He closed his eyes, and saw himself as part of the dripping cavern wall, part of the scenery. He saw sunlight and shadows rushing over him in quick succession, as though he was in one of those speeded-up nature films. And, all the time, his eyes were closed serenely, his white skin pale, still and cold as marble. Like patience on a monument.   
  
“How are we going to get down there, Sev?” Regulus asked anxiously, peering over the edge of the abyss.   
  
Severus opened his eyes unwillingly. The Griffin was nuzzling its beak against his shoulder. It seemed to have got attached to him. And this spark of affection from a creature that couldn’t hope to gain anything from him, jarred him out of his Occlumency state. He shuddered involuntarily.   
  
Still, he was here now. He’d used an Unforgivable Curse on a teacher. There was no going back. Lily wouldn’t respect him if he did.   
  
“We fly down,” he said, regaining his composure just in time to enjoy the look of horror on Regulus’ face. “She’s quite harmless, as long as you don’t think guilty thoughts.”   
  
Regulus looked as though this was a pretty tall order, but he said nothing.   
  
The creature took them, one by one, into the abyss, Regulus clinging on with terror as it plummeted, and Caladrius hardly even blinking. After a plunge of fifty feet, it landed gracefully on the pebbles of a little underground shore, beside the rushing of the river, which was completely black in the cool, comforting darkness.   
  
The foaming black river was narrow and broken with rapids and jagged outcrops of rock. It led into a low-ceilinged tunnel, and there was no foot-path beside it. They were going to have to get their feet wet.   
  
He looked back at Regulus, who was scrabbling amongst the shiny pebbles of the river-bank.   
  
“What are you doing?” he asked. “Collecting bones?”   
  
“Yeah,” said Regulus, chuckling nervously, and slipping something into his pocket. “Girls love that, you know. Get them scared and your job’s half done. They’ll cling to you like ants trapped in jam.”   
  
“Fascinating,” Snape replied. “You know, you should write a book.”   
  
They waded through the icy water in the cramped tunnel. The river-bed was littered with bones and the collected debris of centuries of students. There were soggy text-books, rusty cauldrons, and the pale, white spines of quills that had lost their feathers. The river must have connected with the lake in the grounds, because that was the only place where students dumped their rubbish at Hogwarts. It was officially outside of Filch’s jurisdiction, so he even encouraged the practice.   
  
Eventually, the tunnel emerged into the bright moonlight, and Severus looked cautiously around. The underground stream had led them into a mountain glen, purple in the gloom, and littered with broken rocks – he thought he recognized the snow-capped peaks that were visible from the Astronomy Tower overheard. Behind him were the twisted oaks of the Forbidden Forest. They were outside the castle grounds. And they hadn’t passed any magical defences. Dumbledore really hadn’t known about Abraxas Malfoy’s tunnels.   
  
“It should be safe to Apparate now,” he said calmly. “You’ve got the Trace on you, so we’ll use Side-Along Apparition. Grab onto my arm.”   
  
But Regulus was staring into the forest behind them, and, with a mingled sense of horror and relief, Snape turned round. Somebody was going to stop them. It was all going to be alright (well, if a life sentence in Azkaban could be termed ‘alright’ – but, right now, it seemed quite appealing.)   
  
Remus Lupin was stepping out of the inter-locking branches and leaves that marked the edge of the Forbidden Forest. He looked terrible. His hair was tousled and his face covered in scratches – his skin was pale and shiny, like pearl, only with a greyish tinge. Snape looked up at the sky. There were clouds covering the moon, but he was pretty sure that it was full.   
  
He sighed. Lupin was alone, with no wand, and in his untransformed state. Wasn’t anyone going to make a _serious_ attempt at stopping them?    
  
“You’re out late, Lupin,” he said pleasantly. “Moonlight stroll?”   
  
He looked pointedly up at the clouds that were covering the moon, and Lupin, following his gaze, grew paler. Still, he stood his ground, casting an anxious glance at Caladrius, whose head was now drooping forwards onto his chest.   
  
“What are you doing out here with the Divination teacher, Severus?”   
  
Severus appeared surprised to find that Caladrius was there. “He’s not with us,” he said brightly, shrugging, “he must have wondered out here by himself.”   
  
“Well, I’ll just take him back, then,” said Lupin, with every attempt at civility.   
  
“I’m not sure I can let you do that, in good conscience, Lupin.” Snape said, with fake solemnity. “I mean, it’s not very cloudy anymore, is it?”   
  
And, as if to underline his point, a pale cast of moonlight appeared on the ground outside the trees. Lupin ducked back into the shadows, breathing rapidly. But it was only for a moment: the moon soon disappeared behind the blue-black clouds again, and he emerged from the trees, trembling like a leaf.   
  
“I think you’d better go back to the castle, Remus,” Snape said calmly. “It wouldn’t do for anyone to get hurt.”   
  
Lupin was looking pale and distracted: he was clearly in a lot of pain, and Snape could tell that every instinct in his body was urging him to get away from these people, before he started ripping their throats out. But he couldn’t leave Caladrius. He probably knew – because Potter told his simpering little fan-club everything – that the Dark Lord was after him.   
  
Severus looked up at the clouds again. They were thinning. Lupin was running out of time.   
  
“Listen, Severus,” he said desperately, clearly realizing it. “You don’t have to do this. It’s wrong.”  
  
Snape raised his eyebrows. “Never heard that one before,” he said.    
  
“You don’t know how many people could suffer - ,”   
  
“True,” Snape said fairly. “But I’m counting on it being quite a few.”   
  
“You have every reason to be angry,” Lupin went on, in a sterner tone, “but the people you’re angry with aren’t the ones who are going to suffer through this.”  
  
“I’m angry with quite a lot of people,” Severus said patiently. “Chances are, one of them will.”    
  
“Just because you’ve been treated badly – and I admit it, you have – that doesn’t give you a right to - ,”   
  
“Stupefy!” Snape shouted, shooting a jet of red light at Lupin’s chest. Lupin blinked, rocked back on his heels slightly, and then keeled over, hitting his head against the base of a tree as he did so.   
  
Regulus winced and stared, clearly torn between alarm and the desire to look casual.  
  
“Is he - ,”   
  
“You’d know it if he was,” Snape answered.   
  
The moon had been coming out, anyway. He would have had to have done it sooner or later. Werewolves were so strongly magical that defensive spells just bounced right off them in their transformed state. You could only attack them in the shadows, when they took on human appearance. Severus knew he ought to have killed him, to preserve his alibi. Dumbledore would know who’d taken Caladrius as soon as Lupin regained consciousness. But Dumbledore was finished. He was history. He couldn’t get at Severus, not where he was going.    
  
“Leave him here,” Snape instructed.   
  
“But - ,” Regulus spluttered. “He might get eaten by a werewolf - ,”   
  
Snape gave a hollow laugh.   
  
“Or taken prisoner by the Centaurs,” Regulus went on anxiously. “It’s not safe here.”    
  
“Do you want to join the Dark Lord?” Snape asked irritably. “Or would you prefer to stay here shielding your enemies from the rain?”   
  
“But dragging pure-bloods into it is… is not right,” he finished lamely.   
  
Snape grabbed him by the collar and slammed him up against a tree. “Let’s get one thing straight,” he said, slowly and calmly, emphasizing every word. “I don’t care what’s right, I don’t care what’s best, and I don’t, I _don’t_ , care who gets hurt.”


	42. A Taste of Things to Come

Professor Caladrius opened his eyes, to find that he was tied to a stake in the centre of a dark, stone-walled room. Stone benches rose in tiers around him, and, for a moment, he was reminded of the Divination classroom, but this room had no windows; Caladrius always began to feel uncomfortable in rooms with no windows. He avoided the Hogwarts dungeons like the plague.    
  
He’d been woken by the sound of the door opening and, as his vision cleared, he began to make out the figure watching him from the doorway: thin, sallow-skinned and hook-nosed, with greasy black hair and hard black eyes.      
  
Caladrius stared at him, white-faced. For a few moments, he was incapable of speech. He wasn’t used to seeing deaths this horrible.   
  
He could see the circumstances, and even sense a little of the feelings, of the people whose deaths he was witnessing. Snape died frightened - but it was the same textured fear that he had experienced with Lily - it was real fear, but it was masking some deeper anxiety - a fear of failure, a desperation, even a feeling of deep-seated tenderness. They were both ingeniously pretending at the moment of their deaths. They were both mortally afraid of something other than the terrible figure standing before them.   
  
Still, it was a while before these sensations made themselves clear through the blood and anguish that immediately greeted Caladrius’ eyes.   
  
He had to remind himself that this was the murderer of Professor Dumbledore, and therefore not worthy to be compared with Lily Evans.    
  
“Severus Snape?” he asked pointlessly.  
  
Snape felt as though he really had died, and he was watching the horrified face of the only witness. He felt as though, if he looked down, he would see a dark, spreading stain of blood on his shirt, or an arrow sticking out of his chest. For a moment, all thoughts of anger, vengeance and ambition disappeared, as he stared into the eyes of the man who was seeing him die. He was frightened of the horror in that face - more frightened than he had ever been of anything.     
  
But Snape had a clinical attitude toward horror. After all, he had disembowelled horned toads in Potions and had front row seats for the Muggle-baiting at the Hanged Man. He knew what was inside of people, and seeing it on the outside was not such a very big step. Snape tried to imagine his heart, fluttering in his chest, as it really was: sticky, tear-ably soft and fragile. That was all he was, he told himself; a collection of organs and vessels threaded artfully together. But horror was different when it applied to you, when it was your insides spilling out of you; nothing could prepare you for that.    
  
Snape gritted his teeth and twisted his mouth into a smile. He let hatred fill him up again; hatred knew no fear. He didn’t care how bad his death was, as long as it post-dated James Potter’s.   
  
“That bad, huh?” he asked lightly. “Well, don’t worry; I haven’t come here to ask you about it. There’s only one person’s death you’ll be asked to foretell while you’re here and, if you don’t do it, I’ll be able to foretell yours.”   
  
Caladrius was still white and shaking, but he looked at Snape with an expression of pure venom; hatred was the only thing keeping him on his feet as well. “I’ve seen my death, you idiot,” he replied. “It doesn’t happen here and it doesn’t happen now. And I’ve seen yours. You’ve taken your first step towards it tonight.”   
  
“Every step is a step towards it,” Snape replied coldly. “I’m not afraid of death.”   
  
“How spectacularly stupid of you,” said Caladrius. “Your master is afraid of it; are you saying you’re braver than him?”   
  
Snape sighed. “As interesting as this conversation is, sir,” he laid a sardonic stress on the word, “I have work to do.”   
  
“You’ll die alone,” Caladrius spat, “terrified…”   
  
“Tell me,” Snape said, moving close to the Divination Professor, so that their faces were level. His black eyes were glittering with malice. “Do I die after James Potter?”   
  
Caladrius hesitated, but the answer came before he’d had time to think about it: “Yes.”   
  
“Do I cause his death?” Snape asked.   
  
Caladrius struggled against the motion of his lips, but still the word spilled out: “yes.”  
  
“Does he suffer?” Snape was whispering now, his voice trembling with triumphant happiness.    
  
Caladrius bit his tongue to keep from speaking, but his lips were forming the answer without the intervention of his brain. Desperately, and almost incoherently, he blurted out the words: “You’re not asking the right questions - ,”   
  
“Excuse me?”   
  
“Yes!” Caladrius roared, unable to stop himself.   
  
Snape smiled broadly. “That’s all I want,” he whispered. “Let my death be as lonely, as frightening, as you’ve described; it doesn’t matter as long as my enemies die - and die horribly - before me.” He moved to the door and then turned back, his expression cruelly casual. “Oh, and by the way, the answer to the question you should have asked: ‘have I given you Veritaserum?’ is ‘yes’.”  
  
Caladrius closed his eyes, as though he were in terrible pain, but Snape only smirked at him. The heady, swooping thrill of having power over someone was making him dizzy. “I’ll be back with your interrogator,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady, and left before Caladrius could speak again.   
  
Alone in the flag-stoned corridor, Severus pressed his forehead to the cool, damp stone and tried to regain control. He felt as though he was possessed; hatred was coursing through his veins, animating his limbs, eating him from the inside out - hatred that was directed at Potter, but somehow it didn’t matter who received the effects of it. He felt like he was torturing Potter by torturing Caladrius. His hatred was so intense, it could feed off anything.   
  
He had achieved what his mother could only dream about, he thought suddenly. He had made his hatred mobile, malleable. It gave him strength and purpose - but he could take it where he liked, use it against whoever he liked. He would always be stuck hating Potter, but he could make the rest of the world suffer for it.  
  
Briefly, he wondered whether he could direct this hatred against Lily. A surge of bitterness hit him as he thought about her; it almost made him throw up. His stomach burned at the memory of that arrogant creep draped and drooling all over her, and Lily tolerating it, Lily liking it.     
  
Snape shook his head quickly: don’t think about it, he told himself; that way madness lies.   
  
He took a deep breath and set off up the corridor towards the library, where the Dark Lord waited.   
  
Voldemort was standing at the back of the room, trailing his long, white fingers over the spines of the books in front of him. Severus was reminded of Lily’s tenderness for her favourite books - and the comparison was both painful and bizarre. He stood in the doorway, trying to master himself, trying to wade into his Occlumency state. Voldemort was a skilled Legilimens. Any thoughts of Lily would be immediately obvious to him - as harsh and discordant as a snapping twig in a silent forest.   
  
Malfoy was standing to one side, wearing a white mask that did nothing to disguise his distinctive, ice-blonde hair. Snape wondered why he bothered. Regulus was kneeling in front of Voldemort, looking at him with a drooling, manic enthusiasm that was very reminiscent of Bella.   
  
Voldemort turned, and Severus was confronted with a nightmare-vision. A chalk-white face, flattened and long, with serpentine eyes and slit-like nostrils.   
  
“Well, Severus?” the face asked, in a high-pitched hiss that made Snape think of finger-nails on blackboards.  
  
Snape tried to speak, and couldn’t. The monstrous figure in front of him was radiating an air of authority that was almost palpable. He had never been so sure that this was a person to be afraid of.   
  
Lucius came to his rescue. “We have given the prisoner Veritaserum, my lord. He will be unable to conceal the content of his visions from you.”   
  
“Who brewed the Veritaserum?”   
  
Again, the creature’s red eyes were directed at Severus, and again, he was unable to speak. He could feel the man riffling through his mind as though it were a very boring book, in which he was trying to find an interesting part.  
  
“Severus, my lord,” said Lucius. “He is extremely skilled at brewing potions.”  
  
“Is this true, boy?” came the soft, amused hiss.   
  
Severus screwed up every fibre of his being against the mental intrusion that Voldemort was performing. He looked the creature in its narrow, blood-red eyes, and nodded.     
  
“And what do you want in return for this highly useful gift?” Voldemort asked lazily.    
  
“Nothing, my lord,” Lucius answered quickly.   
  
“All we ask is the honour of serving you,” Regulus added enthusiastically.   
  
There was a pause. “I believe Severus here has a price in mind,” Voldemort said lightly.   
  
Snape, ignoring the way that Lucius was shaking his head rapidly, said: “I need you to get rid of someone for me.” His voice was remarkably steady considering the  fear that was making his knees quake.   
  
“And what, precisely, do you mean by ‘getting rid’ of this person?” Voldemort asked, his voice as soft as that harsh, high-pitched hissing could possibly be. Snape got the impression that he was pleased with his audacity.   
  
“I don’t care,” Severus answered. “I don’t care whether you kill him or imprison him or send him to Siberia. I just want him gone.”   
  
Another silence. Lucius and Regulus backed away from Snape slightly, as though to clear the way for Voldemort to curse him. And, for a moment, the Dark Lord seemed tempted. He toyed with his wand, staring at the fierce, unhappy teenager in front of him with vague amusement.    
  
“It is a brave request,” he said eventually. “And I shall consider it. Who is it that you wish me to dispose of?”   
  
“Someone who would have been a danger to you anyway,” Severus said.   
  
He knew at once that he’d said the wrong thing. The Dark Lord drew a harsh, ragged breath, and spat: “A danger to me? Who can you possibly imagine would be a danger to the Dark Lord, Severus Snape?”   
  
“I mean an enemy to you - ,” Snape corrected himself swiftly. His composure was slipping. “An insignificant enemy, of course, my lord, but an enemy - an important wizard in the magical community - ,”   
  
“Who?” Voldemort asked coldly.   
  
“James Potter,” said Snape, and his hatred gave him the courage he needed to look Voldemort in the eyes again.   
  
“The Gryffindor treasure-seeker’s son?” Voldemort asked, with interest.   
  
“Yes, my lord.”   
  
“Why do you want him out of the way?”   
  
Severus had been preparing for this question. He couldn’t lie to Voldemort, because of the charm placed on trainee Death Eaters, but he didn‘t need to. He could lie with the truth, that was the wonderful part.    
  
“I hate him,” he said simply.   
  
Voldemort stared at him. He seemed to have finally found an interesting part in the mind he’d been flicking through. Severus didn’t avoid his gaze - he just relaxed himself into his Occlumency State. That was the key, he realized. Don’t strain, don’t struggle, just fall back into indifference. He was not trying to shut the Dark Lord out, so much as show him the irrelevant parts of his mind, as though that was all there was.   
  
Eventually, and to Snape’s endless horror, the Dark Lord laughed. It was a chilling, screeching sound, and he never forgot it. Regulus sycophantically joined in.   
  
But when the laugh died down, the Dark Lord was smiling at him. “Such single-minded hatred is very admirable, boy,” he murmured. “But never let it interfere with your loyalty to me.”   
  
“Never, my lord,” Snape blurted out, almost crying with relief.   
  
“I will dispose of the treasure-seeker’s son,” Voldemort purred. “But I shall require something more substantial from you.”  
  
"Anything, my lord," Snape murmured, and was surprised to find that he meant it. Sunk deep in his Occlumency state, everything was suddenly wonderfully simple. He would do anything to be rid of James Potter, and that was all there was to it. He couldn’t imagine anything that would be as horrible as Potter's slimy hands on Lily.     


	43. A Taste of Things to Come II

“He’s coming,” Severus said, closing the door to the muggle-baiting room, in which Caladrius was still tied to a stake on the central platform, drooping forlornly, like a thirsty plant. He didn’t look up as Severus entered the room, but there was a low growl from his general direction:   
  
“I’ll bite my tongue out before I tell him anything,” he said.      
  
Snape shrugged. “That’s up to you, isn’t it?”  
  
“You know, the day your enemy dies is going to be the worst day of your life,” Caladrius spat.   
  
“I’ll live,” Severus replied, smiling unpleasantly, “which is kind of the point, isn’t it?”    
  
He chose a seat in the tiers of stone benches that surrounded the central platform, and put his feet up on the bench in front. He was still shaking from his encounter with Voldemort – his knees were weak, and there was a throbbing ache in his temple from the Dark Lord’s attempts to read his thoughts – but he wouldn’t show it in front of Caladrius. Potter was going to die, that was the important thing. It didn’t matter what Voldemort demanded from him in return. He couldn’t live in the same world as James Potter anymore.      
  
The Barman of the Hanged Man entered the room, carrying another shaking tray, on which was arrayed a glass of water and a dripping, under-cooked chunk of meat. Severus looked at him with distracted amusement.   
  
“I don’t think we need to feed him just yet,” he said.   
  
The Barman shook his head and motioned towards the door at the back of the room, which led to the cells where the muggles were kept. The Hanged Man was a labyrinth of secret rooms, passages, dungeons and galleries, which had been enlarged or added to throughout the place’s shady history. When the muggle-baiting theatre was built, (centuries ago, according to Lucius) the cells had been added, to keep the muggles ‘safe’ while they waited to fight.  
  
Rosier was particularly fastidious in the care of his favourite weapon, the muggle called Bruiser. He had insisted that Bruiser was fed meat instead of bread, and given plenty of room to exercise. Since Bruiser spent every minute he wasn’t fighting blinking with bewilderment, Severus didn’t really understand this anxiety. Bruiser’s mind had been so damaged by the memory charms that Rosier used to subdue him that he didn’t even remember who he was anymore.    
  
But Severus didn’t want to make an enemy of Evan Rosier – he was creepy.       
  
“OK,” he said, shrugging, “go in, but make sure you’re out of the way before the Dark Lord gets here.”  
  
When the Barman walked past Caladrius, the balding Divination teacher let out a cry and tried to wrestle free from his ropes, squirming and muttering incoherent words. Snape heard his own name amongst them.    
  
Caladrius must have been having a vision about the barman’s death. But why would he say Severus’ name? Snape glanced at the door, and then approached Caladrius, his black eyes shining with curiosity. He had never been allowed to practise mind magic at school, because Dumbledore despised it: he thought of it as psychic burglary. He had once expelled a student for practising Legilimency on a House Elf.   
  
But here was somebody who couldn’t fight back, somebody who was completely at his mercy. It was an intoxicating feeling.   
  
And there were no teachers to hold him back, no Lily to look disapproving or disappointed.   
  
She was miles away, worlds away, and, for the first time in his life, he was glad of it.    
  
Severus aproached Caladrius, who was muttering and sweating, trying to twist free of his bindings. He didn’t even seem to notice that Snape was there, except that he had said his name, and Snape wanted to know why.   
  
He raised his wand and hissed: “Legilimens!”     
  
Severus’ mind was suddenly thronged with images, vivid little details that seared themselves across the inside of his eye-lids.     
  
A spider crawling over a mirror, a chipped basin, graying-white – the water that poured from the taps was flecked with rust – the sound of a storm outside, rattling the windows.   
  
Severus saw his own face reflected in the mirror – a little more lined perhaps – there were deep-ploughed furrows in his brow, but he couldn’t have been more than a few years older. He was thinner, though: the bones of his ribcage were showing through his skin.   
  
There was a rustling, as of tinder-dry pages, and then Severus suddenly found new thoughts and memories and feelings pressing in on him – things that were at once familiar and chillingly remote.    
  
And then he lost himself in the vision completely. He no longer knew that he was really inside the muggle-baiting theatre at the Hanged Man, prying into Caladrius' visions. He only knew that he was staring at his reflection over the chipped grey basin, and that he was angry.    
  
He splashed water over his unshaven face, and watched the spider crawling over his reflection. It had a slow, sticky motion, as though the air was resisting the creature as it dragged its lumbering body forwards. He was silent for a moment, trying to think what this reminded him of.  
  
And then he had it. The spider on Lily’s ledger had moved just the same way. With a rush of bitterness that made him so dizzy he had to lean over the sink, he remembered his feelings – his pathetically optimistic feelings – as she’d shut her eyes for him. Another rush of the nauseous, pounding hatred shuddered through him as he remembered Bella’s harsh laughter and the ringing sound of the cauldron hitting Lily’s head.   
  
Gripping the edge of the sink, he battled with the rising hatred. Don’t think about it, he told himself. Soon they’ll all be sorry for what they did to you. Until then, keep your head down and your mind blank. Be patient. Don’t betray your feelings. They betrayed you, but that doesn’t matter. You’re over this. Over and above it.  
  
He couldn’t stop wanting her, that was what tortured him. Hope might have been dead, but desire was alive and kicking. In the absence of anything else to nourish it, it was feeding on hope’s corpse.     
  
He looked up at the spider again, focusing on this little detail to try and keep himself from succumbing to the bitter memories. They possessed him sometimes, like howling demons. He watched the creature’s labored progress across the mirror with determined concentration, looking at the bones of his rib-cage showing stark-white through his pale, unhealthy-looking skin. The contours of his body were so shaded in the fading light that he looked like a skeleton. His eyes were lost in the dark shadows underneath them, until they appeared to be hollow sockets and nothing more.   
  
How long this horrific vision lasted, he couldn’t say, but he never quite lost the impression that he was a walking cadaver – dead already, in some important way. He conjured a fire in the hearth, to banish the shadows, but he liked what he saw even less in the glare of the fire-light: his sallow, prematurely-lined face, his thin lips curling with suppressed rage.   
  
And now he had killed somebody. No, it wasn’t as simple as that. Causality was no simple matter, blame was not so easy to apportion as the self-righteous would have you believe.   
  
Other people had had a hand in this – they had driven him to it. Potter and Black, Pettigrew and Lupin, Bella and Narcissa, even Lily.  
  
Sickness rose in him again, and he tipped his head over the sink, alternately gagging and gasping.     
  
Severus forced himself to think, even though he could barely hear his thoughts over the rushing nausea. If you traced the causes of every action back blame spread like a plague. It branched and broadened out, until it no longer mattered whose hand had gripped the wand that cast the curse – so many hands had guided his tonight – there had been eighteen years of mistreatment behind that one curse.   
  
The world owed him. He had just taken something back, that was all.   
  
But he was beginning to realize, though his mind struggled feverishly against the idea, that he had not just killed the bar-tender of the Hanged Man. He had killed his hope.   
  
It sickened him to think it, but he had still nourished a wild, unreasonable, traitorous hope until tonight, that Lily would realize she loved him, would leave that Potter (and now no epithets were necessary, Potter’s name was hateful enough) and knock on his door. On lonely nights, he had visualized it. She would be so sorry – and he would let her be sorry for a while, let her cry and beg – because he hated, hated, _hated_ her – but the fantasy always ended in him forgiving her, wrapping her up in his arms, quieting her sobs.      
  
And this wasn’t like all his other fantasies of revenge. He didn’t _want_ revenge. When he imagined her tears, they were always painful and satisfying at the same time. He didn’t want to triumph over _her_. He wanted her to come to him of her own free will.     
  
But now he had killed someone, he knew that he was divided from Lily forever. She couldn’t love him now, no matter how powerful he became. She might fear him – and that idea was slightly appealing – but she could never love him, not now he had killed someone. It didn’t matter how many hands had guided his, she would only ask him why he hadn’t fought against them. Perhaps he should have fought against them. But then, what would he be? Some pathetic member of Dumbledore’s Order, hanging onto the hem of Lily’s robes while she snuggled up to her despicable husband? Never. Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.   
  
He had the world at his finger-tips, now. Everything he wanted, besides Lily, could be his. And he would _think_ of something he wanted, besides Lily. He would make a life for himself, even if he was a walking cadaver, forever exiled from his hope. He would carve happiness out of exile, just as he had carved power and influence out of his dreary, muggle childhood. He would make something out of his anger – if there was one thing he had learned, it was that there was nothing his anger couldn’t do. Except get Lily.     
  
Severus rocked back on his heels, clutching his head. The gulf between that moment and this was reasserting itself. Memories were being torn out of him, but he held on to the feeling of nausea. He didn’t think he could have let it go if he’d tried.   
  
He peered through his fingers at the muggle-baiting theatre in the Hanged Man, with its rising tiers of stone benches and its dripping stone walls. Caladrius was still tied to the stake, chalk-white and staring at him, and the bar-tender… Severus looked around frantically for the face of the man he was going to kill someday.   
  
He must have gone into the cells at the back of the room, ignoring the cries of Caladrius. He didn’t know what was odd behavior and what wasn’t. He had served the Death Eaters for twenty years. There was probably no shocking him – in spite of his constant trembling.   
  
Severus’ eyes found Caladrius’, and, for a few moments, they were united in horror. Snape tried to force speech through his own lips, but they were numb and uncooperative. Straining every nerve in his body, he managed to utter the words:   
  
“Can you change this?”   
  
Caladrius looked as though he was struggling with speech too, but he couldn’t resist the Veritaserum that was coursing through his veins, no matter how shocked he might have been. Severus, sick as he felt, was still able to register vague surprise that Caladrius could still be shocked by this kind of thing.      
  
“I’ve been trying to,” he blurted out, half-incoherently, but Severus got the gist.   
  
“How?” he asked desperately. “How?”   
  
“You have to let me go,” Caladrius said.   
  
Severus ran his hands through his hair. “I can’t let you go, you idiot,” he groaned. “He’ll kill me.”   
  
“It’s be killed or kill,” Caladrius replied.   
  
But they didn’t have time to exchange any more words, because the door opened and the Dark Lord walked in, trailing the thick darkness of the corridor behind him.     


	44. Curly Hair, Feathers and Flame

Narcissa had invited The Slug Club to hold their meetings at her house. She was a practical girl, when not distracted with love-sickness, and she knew that the only way she was ever going to get into the Slug Club was with careful flattery, a few boxes of crystallized pineapple, and an offer to host one of their gatherings. Narcissa was not the sort to let a lack of talent stand in the way of her advancement.  
  
Slughorn, who felt that beauty was an achievement in itself, was only too happy to acquiesce. Besides, Narcissa’s father had an excellent wine-cellar, a selection of comfortable, leather-upholstered chairs, and made his own brand of wizard tobacco – which emitted multi-coloured smoke and tasted of caramel. Slughorn was very partial to it. An inexhaustible supply would be exactly to his liking.    
  
The place was beautiful – one of those leaning, oak-beamed buildings in Diagon Alley, set back from the main shopping streets, and surrounded by ornately-twisted iron railings and oak-trees. The sky was thunderous above it. There were steps leading up to the forbidding front door, but Slughorn took one look at them, made a sour face, and hovered up them casually. Slughorn was ingeniously lazy. The Slug Club trooped after him, Lily lingering at the back of the group with Margot Holloway.   
  
She was cheerful, as usual, but her spirits were a little oppressed. She wasn’t sure why – she missed Severus, but she had learned to live with that. It was easy: you just buried your head in sympathy; you immersed yourself in other people’s problems, and paid close attention to the world outside yourself. Whenever Lily was upset, she became relentlessly interested in everything. She noticed things like the colour of people’s shoes, or the number of freckles on their cheeks.   
  
Margot had eight freckles, evenly dispersed, as though her face was a join-the-dot puzzle. Lily mentally joined the dots while Margot talked about her latest Potions Experiment. It involved dissecting Pygmy Puffs.    
  
She hadn’t seen Severus since he’d left Professor McGonagall’s Transfiguration lesson, sick, that afternoon. And now he’d failed to turn up to Slughorn’s party. And Bellatrix Black was rampaging about the castle, jinxing boys with a curse that seemed to Lily – who’d been near Potter when Bellatrix had got him – to be little better than the Cruciatus Curse. Certainly, it caused the same deathly pallor and agonized screaming.    
  
She was worried. He’d seemed so distracted recently – he hadn’t even laughed when Pettigrew turned his own nose into a teacup in their last Transfiguration lesson. He wasn’t angry anymore: just determined, and she wondered what it was he was determined to do.   
  
Could he be upset that she was spending so much of her time with Potter? But, if he cared about her, why did he treat her like this? Why did he call her a Mudblood, hit her over the head with cauldrons, and use the Cruciatus Curse on Malfoy right in front of her? And then – as if that wasn’t enough – he’d tried to intimidate her into keeping quiet about it!   
  
Security was very tight around the Slug Club these days, because You-Know-Who’s rise to power was making everyone jumpy: Slughorn had hired two burly security trolls to accompany them on their field-trips. They were dressed in suits – well, suits had been draped over them – and they were holding ferocious-looking clubs.   
  
“I don’t think they’ll be much good if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named does decide to turn up,” Margot said dreamily.   
  
Lily was silent for a while, peering into the shadows behind the railings. “What do you think about him?” she asked suddenly. “You-Know-Who, I mean?”   
  
“He’s quite brilliant,” Margot replied. “But he does seem to take a lot of things on trust. For example, he thinks muggle-born witches and wizards are inferior, but I haven’t been able to establish with any degree of certainty that you’re inferior to the rest of the students here.”   
  
“Well, keep trying,” Lily said cheerfully. She was subsequently to regret this.   
  
The interior of Narcissa’s impressive town-house in Diagon Alley made Lily start.   
  
She had heard that the Malfoys – the only other pure-blood family who equalled the Blacks in importance – only cared about pleasure. But the Black family was clearly traditional. They liked things to be old-fashioned – even if that meant uncomfortable, stone-flagged floors and narrow, slit-like windows. They knew the value of darkness and discomfort. It made an impression on your visitors; it implied that you were too rich to care about frivolities like soft beds and good eyesight.   
  
But someone had done their best to make this place comfortable – even festive. It looked like a chintzy cemetery. The floor was stone-flagged black marble, but it was spotlessly clean, and covered with tasseled or tiger-print rugs; the sofa was an ornately-carved gothic pew in chilly grey granite, but someone had arranged pink cushions on it. The shrunken heads of old House Elves were mounted on the walls, but – Lily stared – there were daisy-chains hanging around their necks. Skulls had been turned upside-down and filled with pot-pourri.  
  
“Professor Slughorn,” said a voice in the shadows, making everyone jump, which had clearly been the voice’s intention. “Allow me to welcome you, and your students, to my humble home.”  
  
It was Aloysius Black, chief warlock of the Wizengamot, and Narcissa’s father. And, while Slughorn blustered up to the man and started wringing his hand, Lily looked in vain for a family resemblance. Aloysius Black was stooped and wolf-like; he had straggly, yellow-grey hair that reached down to his shoulders, and he wore black robes. These, too, were suspiciously clean – and had clearly been ironed, because there was a neat little crease running down each sleeve.    
  
Narcissa was standing beside him. She looked paler than usual, and was staring at her shoes. Some of the vicious vitality had gone out of her, but she could still manage a haughty stare in response to Lily’s inquisitive one.   
  
“Of course, you all know my daughter, Narcissa.”   
  
“Too well,” Sirius Black muttered under his breath.   
  
“And this is my wife, Oblivia.”   
  
Oblivia Black had shiny, but oddly motionless, chestnut ringlets, and wore turquoise robes, with a frilly apron pinned over them. She had a white-toothed, slim, elegant kind of beauty. She looked like a Barbie doll or a glamorous 1950’s house-wife – everything about her was lacquered and fixed. There was something robotic about the way she flicked her hair, the way she hardly ever blinked and constantly smiled.   
  
She looked as though her only possible connection to dark magic would be as some kind of virgin sacrifice at a black mass. And, even then, she would have had to have been gagged, because her voice was about as dark as a fluffy pink cardigan. She was everything that deflated the mystique of dark magic. Lily wondered how Bellatrix Black could share half this woman’s genes.     
  
“This house was purchased by Claudia Black, my renowned mother.”  
  
James Potter snorted derisively at this, but said nothing.   
  
“Usually, one can see a portrait of her there,” Aloysius went on smoothly, motioning towards an ebony picture-frame that was empty of its occupant, but had the painted background of a dungeon laboratory: the kind of room that Dr Frankenstein would have been proud of. “But, I regret to say, her appearances are… sporadic. She comes and goes as she pleases, as she always did in life.”   
  
Was there a slight edge of bitterness to his voice as he said that? Lily knew she must have been really worried about Severus, because she was finding everything so compulsively interesting. She wouldn’t have thought it possible that she could ever be captivated by Aloysius Black.   
  
“I daresay many of your exceptional students have a connection with my family,” Aloysius went on, in a more cheerful voice.    
  
“Actually, one of my students is muggle-born,” Slughorn replied, in a voice that was carefully casual. He indicated Lily, who was standing behind them.   
  
“Indeed?” said Aloysius Black, focusing his beady eyes on Lily. “How refreshing. I am so glad that you have been able to _fit in_ , Miss Evans. It must be very difficult for you – though, I do hope your delicate situation does not entitle you to preferential treatment from your teachers.”   
  
Narcissa sniggered. Slughorn, his moustache ruffling, began to insist that Lily was a perfect student, and had no need of preferential treatment. Lily herself just stared back at him coolly.     
  
She needed some air. When Aloysius Black recommenced his lecture about the history of the house, she pushed her way through the crowd, and out of a door that led into a little walled-garden at the back of the house. This was just like the house itself – very pretty and tidy and tame, with sculpted hedges and (the floral equivalent of lace doilies) fussy little beds of petunias, geraniums and sweet-peas, releasing their scent unobtrusively onto the night. Lily longed to see something climbing and wild, something that wasn’t pink or patterned or sweet-scented. Narcissa’s whole house reeked of her sickly-sweet perfume; all the canapés had tasted of it.    
  
She gave a start to find that Margot was at her elbow.   
  
“Aren’t you enjoying the party?” she asked, in her far-away voice.  
  
“The party is fine; I just don’t like the people in it.”   
  
“He was rather insulting,” Margot sympathized, in a tone that contained no sympathy whatsoever. “I find it fascinating that people can leap to conclusions without knowing all the facts. How can you form an opinion about muggle-borns without a proper chemical and anatomical comparison between them and pure-blood wizards? – or at least compiling statistical records on the grades of muggle-borns throughout the centuries that they’ve been admitted to Hogwarts – though that data might be misleading – I daresay social factors like prejudice and persecution would bias your results.”   
  
Lily made a non-comittal noise, staring desolately at the neat rows of marigolds and sweet-peas in front of her feet. She had the oddest urge to stamp on them.   
  
“But the house is fascinating,” Margot went on dreamily. “Aloysius Black has a collection of Unicorn Skeletons.”     
  
“See, why does everything have to be skeletal?” Lily asked peevishly. “Why does everything have to be dead?”   
  
“I suppose because skeletons last longer, and take less looking after,” Margot answered, with that talent for literal-thinking that made her such an excellent, and unpopular, student.  
  
“It’s a shame the portrait of Claudia Black is empty,” Margot mused. “She was an extraordinary witch. Did you know she had Stygmalian fever, but she transferred the symptoms to her House Elf so that they wouldn’t disrupt her work?”    
  
“Yes,” Lily said coolly.  
  
“Professor Slughorn says her third husband is buried out here. We’re near Highgate Cementary, you see, and the Princes have a vault there. Claudia Black bought this house to be near his resting-place, apparently. I say ‘resting-place’ because he isn’t actually dead. He’s in a magical coma. He broke into a cursed tomb in Egypt when he was twenty-one and fell into a magical sleep. He has never woken up, though the curse seems to have extended his life-span. The Ancient Egyptian wizards are rumoured to have a curse that prevents a person from dying, although their bodies still fall to pieces. I’ve tried re-creating it on a rat, but that died within an hour. I think you need a special kind of Cyprus-flower.”    
  
Lily, who had felt a little jolt in her stomach at the mention of ‘the Princes’ was now feeling a nagging sense of déjà vu. The memory was slippery – just when she thought she’d caught it, it would dart out of her grasp. It was like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands. Still, the memory affected her emotions where it couldn’t affect her mind: she felt her skin prickle, and the colour rose in her cheeks, as though she was embarrassed or excited or angry or elated. She just didn’t know which.    
  
“You mean Moribund Prince?” she asked.   
  
“Yes,” said Margot, with an air of maddening patience. “I understand it was a nick-name. His real name was Maurice. Shall we try to find him?” It wasn’t a question; more an inclusive statement of purpose. Her tone said ‘I’m going to find him, but I don’t mind you tagging along.’ Lily, who was still trying to work out where she had heard about Moribund Prince, followed without hesitation.   
  
Everyone had married him. There had been curly hair, and feathers, and flame.   
  
Lily ran her fingers through her hair, as though to check its straightness. It was like trying to remember a long-distant dream. None of it made sense, and yet it seemed so real.   
  
Margot was sliding back the bolt on the door at the end of the walled garden.   
  
There had been a bolt on the outside of a door. And only certain people could see it.   
  
And they walked into a moonlit garden. This was everything Lily had longed to see a moment before. This was wild and joyfully untidy. There was Convolvulus – with its heart-shaped leaves and white trumpet-like flowers – climbing over more twisted oak-trees. Everything was greenish-black and shiny in the moonlight.  
  
And in the centre, half over-grown with ivy and the choking Convolvulus, was a little glass coffin.   
  
Lily was reminded of the legend of Snow White. But this glass was not transparent; it was begrimed with filth, and patterned with patches of lichen and moss. It was cracked in places, too. There were splintery fissures running down one side of the coffin, as though somebody had smashed into it.   
  
There was a figure within, certainly – dressed in black, undoubtedly – unless the blackness of the night, and the dirt, and the climbing plants, was bleeding into the coffin itself. But they couldn’t make out features, or even body parts. Lily felt a thrill of horror at the idea that this recumbent figure was still alive – perhaps dreaming. Maybe he could hear them. For the moment, every thought of her slippery memory was driven out of her mind, in an intense rush of horror and sympathy.   
  
“How does he breathe?” she asked.   
  
“There are cracks in the glass,” Margot pointed out calmly. “When I was a little girl, my father used to tell me that he walked around at night. But I never paid him much attention. It was obvious that a magical coma couldn’t be intermittent. That would contravene Golpalott’s Fifth Law of Conjuration: a spell’s potency will diminish in time, if - ,”  
  
“I know Golpalott’s Fifth Law of Conjuration,” Lily said impatiently. “I want to see his face. Can you help me clear off some of the muck?”   
  
Margot made a little tutting sound, and waved her wand, muttering: “Evanesco!”   
  
The grime and ivy vanished. Underneath was a pale face that looked so much like Severus’ it almost made Lily cry out. While she stared at it, Margot was saying. “I daresay it’s difficult, when you’ve been brought up by muggles, to instinctively think of magical solutions to everyday problems. Magic will never be second-nature to you, but perhaps that is just as well. Children who have been raised in the wizarding world use magic lightly and inattentively. You only need to look at that Potter boy…” Margot paused, noticing – at last – the horrified look on Lily’s face.   
  
“He can’t hurt you,” she said patiently. “Golpalott’s Fifth Law of Conjuration, remember?”   
  
Lily had brought her hand up to her mouth, and was staring at the hook-nosed face with a kind of horrified recognition.   
  
“Margot,” she gasped, trying to latch on to something familiar, trying to remember where she was. “I’ve just remembered…”   
  
Everything. The Rosura Potion – the Hufflepuff boys she’d kissed – the light in the dungeon classroom where she’d waited for Severus – untying his tie clumsily – laughing – planting kisses all over his face and neck – and he’d kissed her back – he’d said she was amazing.     
  
She looked up at Margot wildly. She wanted to absorb her calmness, her scholarly detachment, her weird, underwater brand of calm.  
  
“What is it, Lily?” Margot asked, going through the motions of concern, but without any of the conviction.   
  
“I think… Dumbledore… stole my memories,” she muttered.   
  
But Margot never had a chance to question her further. There was the sound of hurried footsteps in the garden, and Slughorn came into view, wheezing and flushed.      
  
“Lily,” he said, in as agitated a tone as a creature like Slughorn could muster. “I’ve been looking for you. Something’s happened. I need to return to the castle. Will you see to it that the students take the Floo Network back by ten? I know I can trust you.”          
  
He looked extremely anxious. His moustache was ruffling with his speech and the lazy, contented note in his voice was gone. “What’s happened, Professor?” she asked.   
  
Slughorn glanced twice over his shoulder, and then leaned close to her and whispered. “Caladrius is gone.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“Left the castle. Whether the fellow left under his own steam, or whether he was taken, nobody knows – but Dumbledore wants him found. There are…” he paused uncomfortably, “interested parties, you see.”   
  
Lily, who didn’t see at all, but recognized the agitated and evasive way that people – even powerful wizards like Slughorn – talked about Voldemort, felt a stab of fear for her dear friend.   
  
“Can I come with you?” she asked. “I could help you look; I know his favourite places in the castle.”   
  
“My dear, Dumbledore has ways of determining whether or not somebody is within his castle. The fellow is most definitely gone. And I need your word that you’ll take care of the students.”   
  
“Yes, sir,” Lily said, feeling a strangling sense of helplessness. “What will the… interested parties… do with him, sir?”   
  
“I am happy to say I’ve no idea. I wish to continue to have no idea. In this day and age, Miss Evans, nothing protects a man like whole-hearted and determined _ignorance_.”    
  
And he Apprated on the spot. Lily stared at the space where he’d been with wide-eyed sorrow. This was too much. Severus had loved her, and she’d betrayed him, she’d thrown herself at his worst enemy – and now another of her precious friends – poor Professor Caladrius, who had enough troubles without Voldemort adding to the load – was lost to her.   
  
Without thinking, she looked at the Ideoscope he’d given her; she’d pulled the sleeve of her robes over it and forgotten about the thing, although her wrist had been tingling underneath the leather wrist-band now and again.   
  
The face of the compass was an opalescent white, but shifting, as though it was filled with swirling cloud. It seemed that Mr. Mysterious in New Zealand had woken up, and that the terrors in his head were not particularly terrifying. But then she thought: perhaps he’s blocking his thoughts from me: perhaps he’s using Occlumency: this is probably what a visual representation of an Occlumency state would look like.   
  
What could he be trying to hide? Did he know anything about Caladrius? It now struck Lily that she had a source of information that Dumbledore didn’t. If this colleague, half a world away, but presumably a close friend of the Divination teacher’s, knew anything about where he could have gone…   
  
While Margot droned on about Slughorn’s irresponsible and erratic behavior, Lily saw the mists within the compass thinning, and then a stone corridor appeared. There were rooms branching off it: one doorway was exuding thick green smoke, but that was passed by. The next doorway led into a circular stone chamber, like the Divination classroom, with wooden benches rising in tiers around a central platform.  
  
“He’s coming,” said a voice. It didn’t seem to be proceeding from the compass, but arrived straight in Lily’s head, as though she was reading the words.   
  
“I’ll bite my tongue out before I tell him anything,” said another.   
  
The face of the compass filled with mist again. Lily couldn’t see the central platform, but the voices filled her with an ominous, penetrating cold, as though the mists had leaked into her body, and were swirling around her suddenly-hollow chest.   
  
She knew them. But they were so different from how she knew them. They were filled with immeasurable hatred now, resonating with bitterness, but she was used to one of them being filled with fond exasperation, and the other with gentle, almost absent-minded, horror.   
  
She pulled her sleeve back over the Ideoscope, and tried to block out the voices, but they would go on.   
  
“You know, the day your enemy dies is going to be the worst day of your life.”   
  
“I’ll live,” said her oldest, dearest friend, “which is kind of the point, isn’t it?”


	45. The Porcelain Bitch

There was nothing to talk about anymore. She went back in to the party, forced down a couple of perfume-laced canapés, and tried to smile, but she couldn’t respond to the polite questions about her career prospects, or her latest Potions Project.  
  
The muted buzz of the party, the insufferable pleasantries, the high laughter, and the chink of cutlery, were unbearable. She tried to act like Lily, but she didn’t know what that involved anymore. There had been lots of laughing and eye-brow raising at one stage, but she couldn’t remember why.   
  
Margot was at her elbow, supplying conversation, when there was a lack of it, changing the subject whenever somebody asked Lily what the matter was. It was almost supportive. She was like the ghost of a friend, Margot Holloway. She did everything a friend would have done; she just didn’t mean it. Why she did it, Lily had no idea. Perhaps it was part of her project to research the chemical composition of muggle-borns.   
  
The Ideoscope wouldn’t come off, either. She had tried to get it as far away from her as possible, tried to hurl it into the mess of bracken and Convolvulus beside Moribund Prince’s coffin, but the leather strap had tightened around her wrist, like a boa constrictor. It was cinched-in, bitten-down, and prepared for the long haul.   
  
James Potter and Sirius Black were at the other end of the room, entertaining a group of Slug Club girls – plain but studious – with some breath-taking Quidditch story. Narcissa was still sickly-pale, and clinging to her father’s arm, as if she couldn’t stand up on her own. Her artificial smiles faded as soon as Aloysius Black looked away.   
  
She looked just like Lily at that moment: pale and distracted, trying her best to laugh and fascinate, to be care-free and sociable, but without any conviction or courage. Of course, she was better at it than Lily was. She was a Slytherin. She was used to hiding her own feelings for the sake of her advancement. And there were other conspicuous differences too: the gold trimmings on Narcissa’s shoes, the elegant, well-tailored school robes, the glimmering green eye-shadow, that made her look like a reptilian mirage.   
  
But there was one person like her at the party. The little princess, the porcelain bitch, whose screams had cut into the fog of happiness surrounding Lily in that dungeon classroom, and driven it away forever.   
  
She was well-connected. Her family was steeped up to the elbows in dark magic. Whatever hide-outs the Dark Lord had, Narcissa and her family would know about them. Besides, what she’d seen through the Ideoscope had been a kind of lecture-theatre: a public place, a space for entertaining, not a seedy little back-room in which to meet and plot the world’s destruction. Narcissa would have seen it, no question.   
  
Leaving Margot ensnared in the conversation of a polite Unspeakable called Gerald (for an Unspeakable, he sure could talk a lot), Lily slipped through the crowd, towards Narcissa. She was right next to the door which lead into the garden. It would be easy enough to push her through. But it wasn’t easy to pick a moment when nobody would be looking at Narcissa, because heads swiveled in her direction as though she were the north pole in a room full of compasses.    
  
Finally, Aloysius Black led a few students into the cellar to see his collection of Unicorn Skeletons, and Narciss was left – momentarily – alone.   
  
Hardly waiting for his head to disappear behind the cellar steps, Lily grabbed Narcissa’s elbow, muttered a Silencing Jinx, and pushed her through the door out into the garden.    
  
Narcissa opened her mouth in a scream – obviously, she wouldn’t open it too wide, because she had been trained in the studious avoidance of wrinkles – but no sound emerged. The jostle had caused her to spill Butterbeer over her perfectly-tailored school-robes, and she was looking at Lily with red-faced, tight-lipped fury. It was good to see some colour in her face for once.   
  
Lily held her wand to Narcissa’s throat and began speaking very slowly and clearly.   
  
“Now, I want you to concentrate, princess; do you think you can manage that? I don’t think you need to be told what I can do to you. One incantation, and I can mangle your face so thoroughly that all the expensive pure-blood healers in the world wouldn’t be able to fix it. It just remains to be decided how. Would you like tentacles, or twenty-feet of nostril hair? Would you like welts or boils or open sores? It’s your call, because it’s your face, and I wouldn’t want you to get bored of it. I know how much you love looking at it.”   
  
With a wand pressed into her elegant, white throat, and with no functioning vocal cords, Narcissa tried to look disdainful.   
  
“Oh, you’re thinking that I won’t do it?” Lily asked shrewdly. “You’re thinking that I’d be expelled, maybe even arrested, with your dad being Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and all. And maybe you’re right, but it’s not going to fix your face, princess. Prevention is better than a cure – especially when there is no cure. So open those pretty little eyes of yours, and tell me where this place is.”   
  
She held up the Ideoscope that was now throttling her wrist, through which the stone-walled lecture-theatre could still be seen.   
  
“I’m going to remove the Silencing Jinx for three seconds,” Lily went on, in a business-like tone. “If you scream, you’re going to look like a Flobberworm for the rest of your life. If you lie to me, you’re going to look like a beach-ball for the rest of your life, and if you try to sneer, you inbred moron – if you waste my time with any more brainless chatter about ancient families, and superior blood – you’re going to look like a troll's arm-pit for the rest of your life. The superior one is the one with the wand: that’s what you creeps believe, right? Well, right now, that’s me.”   
  
She flicked her wand upwards, and Narcissa staggered a little, as though she was being released from the clutches of a giant that had been holding her up by the throat.   
  
She cleared her throat, with all the dignity she could muster, and then hissed:  
  
“Knockturn Alley. The Hanged Man. And you could have saved yourself the trouble of those speeches. I wouldn’t dream of lying to you. I wouldn’t miss an opportunity of seeing you get slaughtered by the Dark Lord for all the world.”   
  
“Well, that’s lucky, princess, because you’re coming with me,” Lily replied cheerfully. “Leave without a fuss, and I’ll even refrain from telling people that I saved your boyfriend’s life. Don’t think that would look very good in the society page of the Daily Prophet, do you? One of the last pure-blood families still in existence, and the only son and heir kidnaps a fifteen year-old school-girl, gets himself poisoned by her perfume and has to be saved from an extremely undignified death by a mudblood. Voldemort would probably have him killed on principle.”   
  
She seemed to have touched a nerve here, because the fight went out of Narcissa. Besides, there was a dull curiosity shining in those dead, grey eyes. She wanted to see what would happen. Perhaps she wanted to see what went on at The Hanged Man after-hours. Perhaps she just wanted to see the elaborate way in which Lily was sure to be killed. Whatever the reason, she picked up her cloak – silk-lined with silver fastenings – muttered an excuse to her father, and led them through Moribund Prince’s graveyard and into the street.   
  
  
Lily had only been down Knockturn Alley once before, to visit Borgin and Burkes. She had peered at mummified cats, wrapped in bandages – some of them still in their faded sarcophagi. Dried spiders had hung from the ceiling, and she remembered a blood-stained, lacey dress on a mannequin, which shifted position every time you turned away.   
  
She understood the principle. People were afraid of these things, and fear was a powerful basis for magic. If you could frighten someone, you were halfway towards exerting your will over them. All dark magic was about dominating others.    
  
That was the first rule of dealing with dark magic: turn on the light. Get a good look at what you’re dealing with, under all the bravado and mystery, under the black cloaks and the masks. Don’t be deceived by appearances: even Voldemort, warped and red-eyed as he was – had human failings. He was vain and needy; he wanted a reputation; he wanted followers that were little short of worshippers. He didn’t need these trappings of fame; he didn’t need people to be frightened of him; he didn’t need to be venerated or adored, because he was the most powerful wizard that had ever existed. He was in a position to enforce obedience and respect, and yet he wanted obedience and respect to come to him of their own free will. That meant that he could be beaten.   
  
Lily wasn’t simply up against talent, because talent was refracted through the prism of human personality – it was split, or dampened, or intensified, by neuroses and needs. If she was just fighting Voldemort’s talent, everything would be over before it had begun, because there was nobody more talented than him. But what he made of his gifts was another matter.   
  
That was why Dumbledore studied Voldemort’s past, called him by his muggle father’s name: he was resisting all the hype, peering through the pall of fear that surrounded him, trying to get to the vulnerable human beneath.   
  
The shop windows were dark now. The awnings that had hung over them had been reeled in, or were hanging limply over the shop-fronts, trying to disguise whatever shady dealings might be going on within.   
  
Thick mist hung over the scummy puddles, and black ivy was wound tightly around the street-lamps, throttling them, and muffling their bluish light. The street had an air of dilapidated grandeur that reminded Lily of the Valance House. She half expected to see axes mounted on the walls.   
  
What she did see on the walls was far more disturbing: black graffiti, only distinguishable from the black wall behind it because it was wetter. Daubed in what looked like bile were the words: I Feed Mudbloods to my Dog.   
  
Narcissa was inspecting her shoes: some black ivy had brushed against them, and she was worried that they were scuffed. Almost absent-mindedly, she muttered: “You know you’re going to be killed?”  
  
“Of course,” Lily replied simply.   
  
“Horribly.”   
  
“I’d hope so. If mudbloods can be famous for nothing else, we can make spectacular ends.”   
  
“What’s so important about finding him, anyway? You think you can beat the Dark Lord? He wouldn’t even bother dueling you himself; you’re not worthy to look at him, let alone fight him: he’d have you dispatched by one of his Death Eater lackeys.”  
  
“Well, if all his lackeys are as lame as you, I’m not worried.”   
  
“He’ll have you in the muggle-baiting ring, being beaten into a pulp by one of your own kind,” Narcissa sneered.    
  
Lily had no idea what this meant, but she wasn’t about to admit ignorance in front of Narcissa. “Not just me, princess,” she said patiently. “He’s not going to be very happy with you when he finds out you helped me to get in.”   
  
“I’m not going to help you get in!” Narcissa protested shrilly.   
  
“We’ll see.”   
  
Lily felt better now that she was doing something. She even had a plan. It was a long shot. It was the longest shot in the history of long-shots; the kind of long-shot that would require a telescopic lens and, where that failed, a prayer. But it might work.  
  
She was going to save Caladrius – and Severus, if possible – if not, she would have to leave him behind. She would have to accept, once and for all, that there was no helping him. After all, where was all his anger supposed to go? Could love diffuse it? Could patience dismantle it? Probably not. The only way to get anger out of your system was to smash a few things. And, in order for Severus to get all the anger out of his system, he’d be smashing things forever. There’d be nothing left when he’d finished.    
  
She stopped outside Borgin and Burkes, trying to get her bearings. To the right of the door was a high window, just at the level of her eyes, cracked and entirely opaque with grime. But on the ledge in front of it was a little bottle. It was black glass, sculpted with ornate markings and insignia. The stopper was made of silver, of the same elaborate design. But around the bottle-neck, someone had attached a label via a length of dirty string. It said: ‘Drink me’.   
  
Lily suddenly remembered hearing Alice in Wonderland when she was little. It had scared her so much. When she’d first heard about Voldemort and his campaign against muggle-borns, she had thought of the Queen of Hearts, randomly shouting: ‘Off with his head’ at anyone who irked him (except, instead of ‘Off with his head’, it was ‘Avada Kedavra’). But it was the same principle. Just as savage and arbitrary. A game in which everybody else seemed to know the rules.    
  
She picked up the bottle, and flipped the label over. On its other side was a pencil sketch of a Lily.   
  
It was for her. But who knew she was here? Was Severus expecting her to come after him? Was he trying to help her? Maybe he’d been forced to take Caladrius to the Dark Lord – blackmailed or threatened – maybe Voldemort had kidnapped his mother.   
  
“I don’t know why Severus ever debased himself with you,” Narcissa interrupted, as though she felt that they had gone too long without exchanging insults, and people were going to start thinking they were friends. “He’s intelligent: he respects pure-bloods.”   
  
“Only when they have something he wants,” Lily muttered.   
  
“Well, you needn’t worry about _that_ ,” Narcissa replied, a little defensively. “He came up to my bedroom tonight, but I told him to go away. I’m going to marry Lucius Malfoy,” she added, as though she thought this last sentence would be the real painful blow.    
  
“What?”   
  
“That’s right. And a common bitch like you wouldn’t even be able to marry his _House-Elf_.”  
  
“He has a House Elf?”   
  
“Who do you think cleans that mansion? His mother?”   
  
“Wait,” Lily ran her fingers through her hair. “Who are we talking about here?”   
  
“Lucius Malfoy.”   
  
“Oh.” She blinked. As her confusion subsided, she began to feel the sting. Snape had gone up to Narcissa’s bedroom. Could there possibly be an innocent explanation? If not, he had unforgivably bad taste – but, then, he’d gone to join Voldemort, of course he had bad taste.   
  
But Voldemort was one thing; Narcissa was quite another. People might join Voldemort because they were scared, or black-mailed, or intimidated. They might do it for motives that were, if not noble, at least understandable. But people who got romantic with Narcissa were lost to every good feeling. They were ruled by greed and willful stupidity.   
  
Are you actually saying, her brain interjected, that you’d rather he was a Death Eater than Narcissa’s boyfriend?    
  
Fortunately, she never got a chance to answer herself. There was a scuffling sound at the far end of the street, as though of feet on cobbles, and then silence. Lily was sure they could be seen: they were standing right underneath a street-lamp – but, for a long time, nothing happened. She supposed they were being assessed.    
  
They were a strange sight, she had to admit: two girls, dressed in school robes, and peering around dark corners: one of them thin, haughty, and luminously pale in the moonlight: the other one sturdier, with rosy cheeks, and sharp green eyes that made you think of pine needles.   
  
And then she felt the familiar, creeping cold: a kick of icy air that hit her full in the face, and almost sent her reeling backwards.   
  
Perhaps it would have done, if Narcissa hadn’t been there. But there would be no reeling in front of this snooty bitch: Lily was adamant of that.   
  
“It’s a Dementor,” she said, surprised to find her voice steady. She peered at the darkness for a moment, and then added: “Five.”   
  
Narcissa gasped. “But they’re supposed to be guarding Azkaban! They’re not _allowed_ here!”   
  
“Why don’t you go tell them that?” Lily suggested.   
  
Over the sounds that were now pouring in through her ears – the echoes of her worst memories – she said. “Do you know the spell to repel them? You just concentrate on a happy memory, and say: ‘Expecto Patronum’.”   
  
Narcissa didn’t seem to think much of this plan, because she turned to run. Lily caught her by the elbow, and dragged her back. She was incredibly light.   
  
“If you run, Princess, they’ll catch you,” she growled. “And they don’t know the difference between pure-bloods and mudbloods. Your incestuous family tree doesn’t mean anything to _them_.”   
  
Lily turned back towards the Dementors. Narcissa had enough sense not to wander off on her own: she might not know much about magic, but she was skilled in the art of self-preservation.   
  
You’ve got to keep the light on, that’s the important thing. See what you’re dealing with. These aren’t phantoms come to drag you down to a hell of bitter memories: they’re biological creatures like you: they have to eat, and sleep, and breathe, and they can die. They want you to think that the rules don’t apply to them, but they do.   
  
The lamps were going out at the far end of the street now. And, as the Dementors glided soundlessly towards them, every light they passed flickered, and then vanished. Darkness was swallowing the entire street. But Lily wasn’t alarmed by this. Darkness could only improve a place like Knockturn Alley.  
  
She concentrated on the lamp above her and, as it started to flicker, muttered “Incendio” under her breath. She was feeding the flame with one of her own conjuring, so that every time the light flickered, it came back blazing.     
  
The Dementors stopped advancing. She supposed she had made her point. How they would respond to it was another matter. She couldn’t swear to it, but they looked almost angry. They were soundless, of course, but there was a kind of buzzing coming from them – half-way between noise and motion. They were half-grumbling, and half-trembling, with rage.   
  
Then she heard a wet, rattling intake of breath, like an engine revving-up, and she suddenly felt frightened. She was fine when the fight required her to be ruthless and single-minded, but, when it required her to be happy, she was lost. Or anyway, she was tonight.   
  
“That’s where you’re going,” sneered Petunia, through the years, and through the steam that had shrouded her on Platform Nine and Three Quarters. “A special school for freaks. You and that Snape boy… weirdos, that’s what you two are.”   
  
She had been called worse.   
  
“Geez, Evans!” Avery exclaimed. “Even your own kind don’t want you! How does it feel to be a freak in both worlds?”     
  
His parents were cousins. What did he know?   
  
“I don’t need help from filthy little mudbloods like her,” Snape hissed.   
  
That was old news now. The sting was duller. Just a background ache.   
  
“He’s coming,” said Severus, and Lily’s blood froze inside her veins.   
  
She heard Caladrius growl: “I’ll bite my tongue out about before I tell him anything.”   
  
And she could hear the cruel, callous shrug in Snape’s voice as he replied. “That’s up to you, isn’t it?”   
  
There was nothing but hate in that voice. No trace of playful sarcasm or exasperated patience. He was gone. And it didn’t matter if she rescued him from Voldemort, it didn’t matter if she told him that their kiss had meant something to her, or that she would never go out with Potter. He would still be dead. She couldn’t reclaim him from all that hate. What did one idealistic little girl matter, when the whole world got under your skin?  
  
Anger had eaten him. And, even if she could get him back, he would be a mangled, regurgitated mess. Where would you even start, with someone who had come back from inside the belly of the beast?    
  
There was nowhere else to go. There was nowhere she could find him.   
  
And, just as she closed her eyes, surrendering – at last – to the numbing cold, a strange image flickered across the inside of her eye-lids. It was like a kind of visual spasm. And, for the longest time, she couldn’t remember whether it was a memory or a dream.   
  
And then she realized it was a bit of both. It was the image of Severus standing in the shallow water, glowering at the scene of beach-ball-throwing and frivolity that was stretched out on the beach in front of him, looking daggers at the palm trees and the scar of sunlight on the sea.   
  
It was the world she’d seen through the window in her library book. Severus was still alive there. He could tell her what to do. He could tell her how to save him.    
  
She slashed her wand through the air, making the Dementors jump back a little, and shouted: “Esperio!”   
  
And the scene in front of her began to fragment. A bright gash appeared down the cobble-stoned street, just like the scar of sunlight on the sea.   
  
It widened, and a salt breeze ruffled her hair. Searching, tentative beams of sunlight brushed her face, glinting off the dark cobbles of Knockturn Alley, subjecting them to more light than they had probably ever encountered before.    
  
She turned on her heels, in front of the window into the other world, to grab Narcissa, but she was disappearing up the street, her high-heels clattering ludicrously on the cobbles. Lily wondered whether it was the Dementors or the Esperio Charm that had scared her away. Probably both.   
  
For a few moments, she hovered on the brink of the other world, wondering whether to go after Narcissa. She was very conspicuous, and this was a rough enough neighbourhood without the Dementors.   
  
But then a grey, scabbed hand reached through the image of the beach and grabbed her throat. It was pulling her forwards, but it couldn’t see the world that it was pulling her into.   
  
Her shoes, which had been dragging firmly along the cobbles, suddenly found that there was nothing underneath them anymore. Lily was being held up by her throat, with her feet dangling in another world.   
  
Choking, she grabbed hold of the scabbed claw with both her hands and raked her nails across it. They’re not spirits, she told herself. They feel pain. They’re just like you.    
  
Other hands were reaching for her, plunging themselves through the beautiful vista of beach-world, creating swirls and eddies in the picture.    
  
Lily kicked forwards, and found that her foot connected with something. There was a hissing intake of breath and then a sudden, jarring absence of hand at her throat. She felt as though she hovered in the air for a few minutes before falling. Ludicrous, she realized, as she spat sand out of her mouth and rubbed her knees, straightening up to see a window into Knockturn Alley that was shrinking to a pinpoint of darkness, and then vanishing. But perhaps the normal rules of physics didn’t apply here.


	46. A Little Corner of Paradise

Lily looked around at the beach she had first seen through a window in her library book, the place that was supposed to display the furniture of her mind.   
  
It was almost unrecognizable. The cliffs overhead were crumbling into the slate-grey sea, throwing up drops of moisture like iron filings, which got snatched up by the wind, and driven into her eyes. Sea-birds were deeply embedded in the cloud overhead, their harsh cawing hardly audible over the screeching of the wind. From the fitful shadows they cast on the sand, they seemed to be circling, like vultures. Still, they didn’t sound particularly hostile: that was what Lily had always loved about sea-gulls; they were morally neutral: they didn’t sound vicious or hopeful, they just sounded like the wilderness.    
  
The towering palm trees had been blown over - most of them, she supposed, had been swept away by the tide, but here and there, dotted about the beach, she could see one half-submerged in the foamy grey water - a mass of soggy black leaves, encrusted with sand.  
  
There were black rocks piercing the water here and there – chunks from the crumbling cliffs, probably. Seaweed was clinging to them like wet hair. It made her skin creep, set her teeth on edge. Everything about this place was close and uncomfortable.     
  
Well, almost everything. Severus Snape was sitting alone on the rose-grey sand with his knees drawn up to his chest, staring down the horizon. The water was gathering around him, but the patch of sand he sat on was dry. It was the last island of dryness – everything else was being steadily eaten by the sea.   
  
He looked like a statue – a hunched finger of black rock that refused to be swept away by the sea – the last remnant of some castle, perhaps, or the stub of a once-towering pillar. His face was set in that harsh, unhappy stare that Lily knew so well – his Occlumency mask, furrowed with resentment, screwed up in an expression of vicious malcontent. His hair was clumped and tangled; the salt spray had made it matte, instead of shiny, and it was plastered to his forehead in the moist air, but he didn’t push it away; he was too intent on the horizon.   
  
Lily couldn’t see why. It was a blank, eye-aching white, from one side of the beach to the other, as though they were standing on a painted landscape and the artist had forgotten to fill in the sky. Lily couldn’t see very well, because her eyes were clogged-up with salt, from the spray of the sea and her earlier tears, but she definitely got the impression that she wasn’t missing much.          
  
She stood still for a while, steeped up to her ankles in the slate-grey sea. The tide was fizzing over hundreds of round pebbles – jet black, earthen brown, sugar-lump-grey – they looked like an assortment of boiled sweets and marbles. That would be just the kind of sweet wizards would favour, Lily thought – one where you had to play Russian Roulette with the contents. There were marbles in the bag as well as sweets, but you couldn’t tell them apart until you ate them. Because, for wizards, fun was not fun without an element of danger.      
  
Lily waded through the water to sit beside Severus, drawing her knees up to her chest. There were grains of the dark sand clinging to her palms, and she examined them for a while, to avoid looking up at her old friend.   
  
“Hi,” he said eventually.   
  
“Hi,” she replied.   
  
There was a silence. Lily followed his gaze across the sea. Severus seemed to have found something interesting in the blank sky-canvas, because he wouldn’t look away.   
  
“It’s not such a great place to be anymore,” he said.   
  
“Yeah,” Lily mumbled, “sorry.”   
  
“Don’t be. I didn’t like it when it was.”   
  
She was silent for a little while, counting the grains of sand on her fingers, hoping she could lull herself into that state of distracted joy that gripped her from time to time, and made her forget Severus. When she had lost count, and her chest was still aching, she said: “How come you’re still here?”    
  
Severus looked up at her. The ghost of a smile flickered around his mouth for a moment. “I’ll always be here,” he said.    
  
“I messed everything up, Sev,” Lily blurted, blinking back the tears that were stinging her eyes.    
  
“I don’t think you did it alone,” he said calmly.  
  
Lily leaned her head on his shoulder, and he didn’t push her away. She cried quietly, letting her tears soak through his school robes, but he made no move to comfort her.  
  
Lily had not been expecting sympathy, but she was stung by his coldness, all the same. She lifted her head off his shoulder and, when she could steady her voice, she said: “What’s wrong with you?”    
  
“I don’t like you,” he said simply. “That’s what you think, right? And what you think, I do. That’s what I’m here for.” He shrugged again, hunching his shoulders against the icy wind. “To be honest, I think it’s the only reason I’m here at all – to criticize you. The others – your mum and dad, your brainless Gryffindor friends, your,” his voice hardened with dislike, “ _sister_ – they only made you think of happy times. So they had to go. You can’t have any weapons on your side. If you’re going to be helped, it’s got to be by accident. But I got to stay because you think I hate you.”   
  
“You must hate me,” Lily murmured, unable to suppress the comment.   
  
Severus shrugged again. “I’m just a memory, Lil. I don’t have any new information.”   
  
Lily tried to compose herself. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing black sand across her face. Severus lifted his eyes from the horizon to look at her.   
  
“I can give you some old information that you seem to have overlooked, though,” he said, again quite calmly. “I think you’re amazing.”   
  
Lily looked down at her knees miserably. “That was before.”   
  
He gave her a crooked smile and gestured around at the beach. “As you can see, I’m not as fickle as most of the people you know.”   
  
Lily made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob.   
  
Severus reached up to brush the sand off her cheek, but his hands were already coated with the stuff, so he only succeeded in rubbing the sharp little grains against her skin. Lily felt a stubbly, stinging, grinding sensation, like a slow-motion slap, but she relished it, because it felt real. He kissed her raw cheeks – and, after the stinging and the cold, she felt his hot, soft kisses more intensely than she had ever felt anything before. He was blazing new path-ways through her nerves.  
  
Then, eventually, he looked out over the horizon again, smiling as though James Potter had just fallen five hundred feet from his broomstick.     
  
“You need a Patronus, right?” he asked gently.    
  
“Yeah,” she replied, when she could steady her voice. “But I can’t think of any happy memories – they’re all ruined - ,” her voice wavered, and tears threatened to overwhelm her, so she fell into silence, blinking stubbornly. She wouldn’t cry in front of him anymore.    
  
“You can have one of mine, if you like,” he said after a while. “It’s not much. Probably not what you’d call happy at all. But it works for me.”   
  
Lily tried to smile, but her face was stiff from the cold and the salt-spray. “Show me,” she said.   
  
“Shut your eyes,” he instructed.    
  
She did, and was suddenly transported from the wet, iron-grey beach, to platform Nine and Three Quarters. The scene was ragged with scraps of steam - it lingered against her cheek like a wet, warm kiss. Through it, there were hurrying figures in school robes, carrying trunks and cages, brandishing their wands at each other, leading their friends along by their school-ties. There was the muted, high-pitched sound of children - jeering, howling, and gargling their trivial abuse. And an emptiness in her stomach, a gnawing loneliness that didn’t make her feel angry, as everything else did, but limitlessly sad.    
  
Then a light touch on her shoulder, an arch, knowing smile, an exaggerated yawn at Potter’s arrogant antics, and Lily saw herself turn into the crowd and vanish. A little warmth kindled in her stomach.     
  
The memory was so powerful because it was an oasis in the desert, a little corner of paradise in an immensity of darkness.    
  
Lily opened her eyes, to see Severus smiling at her. He seemed expectant.   
  
“That’s pretty good,” she mumbled awkwardly.   
  
“Somewhere, there’s a universe where you just walked right by me,” he said happily. “Lucky I’m in this one.”   
  
She gave an embarrassed shrug. Tears were strangling her again. “But you’re not really him,” she pointed out, in a constricted voice.  
  
“Then pity him,” Severus said, his black eyes fierce and tender.   
  
Lily knew that he was expecting her to get up, and go back to the Hanged Man, but it was so nice here, even with tears throttling her, and her whole world crumbling piece by piece, and crashing into the metallic ocean. Still, she didn’t want to disappoint him. A hundred Death Eaters were not as bad as disappointing him. So she got up, dusting the sand off her skirt and blinked the tears out of her eyes defiantly.    
  
“You’ll still be here when I come back?” she asked anxiously.   
  
“Always,” he said.


	47. A Means to Nothing

Narcissa met a dead end. She threw her back against the brick wall, her breathing fast and ragged, and scanned the darkness for the black-caped creatures that didn’t make a sound, melted into the shadows, and moved with impossible speed. The gold-embroidered high-heels she was wearing had not been designed for running. Especially not on cobble-stones.   
  
She didn’t know the way home. She had lost track of the streets she had torn through in her effort to escape the Dementors. She seemed to have wandered into some poky back-street, filled with shops too dilapidated and unfashionable for her mother to have ever taken her into them. She could see the window-display of some kind of second-hand robe shop opposite. The hooded black cape on a mannequin in the window was not helping to calm her nerves.   
  
The cheek of those creatures, chasing a daughter of the House of Black! She had been too terrified to resent the indignity of it before, but now that she seemed to have lost them, she was flushed with indignation, as well as exertion.   
  
Those creatures should be made to respect ancient wizarding families! As soon as she got home, she would speak to her father about instilling some kind of social awareness into their rotting, corpse-like heads.   
  
And that insolent mudblood, not even having the decency to look ashamed of what she was! When she next saw Malfoy, she would make him promise to get rid of her.   
  
Narcissa wasn’t used to exercise. If she wanted something done, she bribed or threatened somebody to do it for her. Climbing the marble staircase in the school Entrance Hall was the most energetic thing she’d ever done. It was taking her a long time to catch her breath, and her ragged panting was making her feel uncomfortably conspicuous. Her skin was prickling, and her imagination (which had never been exceptional in the first place) was suddenly running away with her, causing her to imagine that the hooded mannequin was turning his head towards her.   
  
Of course, wizard mannequins often moved around. They were enchanted to shift their posture, in order to display their wares from as many flattering angles as possible, but Narcissa had always assumed that the enchantments faded when the shops were closed – otherwise the things could run riot, breaking windows, or stealing Galleons from the till.   
  
Where were the security trolls? Where were the Magical Law Enforcement Officers? Was she still somewhere in Knockturn Alley, where Ministry Officials didn’t dare to show their faces?   
  
At any rate, the five rogue Dementors were bound to attract attention. Surely somebody at Azkaban would have noticed that they were gone, and would be looking for them?   
  
Narcissa glanced up at the windows above the shops. They were all dark. Not even so much as a twitching net curtain. Wherever she was, it was obviously a neighbourhood filled with night-workers or sound-sleepers.   
  
Was she just imagining it, or was it colder than before?   
  
She drew her cloak about herself – fastened with the silver insignia of the Blacks – which, right now, felt like a lump of useless metal.   
  
And then she saw the street-lamp at the end of the street flicker out. She scanned the line of shops frantically for an alley-way, a Floo Network connection – anything that could help her get away. Short of climbing the brick-wall behind her – and in these heels, it would require magic that was beyond Narcissa’s capabilities – she could think of no other escape.   
  
Drawing out her wand, and resigning herself to the worst – (how vulgar these confrontations were! How wisely had her female ancestors spurned them in favour of poison and slow, psychological torture), she cast around for a happy memory.   
  
Looking at the assorted plain, red, or spotty faces in the Potions classroom on her first day at Hogwarts, and realizing she was indeed the most beautiful girl in the world, had been a good one.   
  
“Expecto Patronum,” she muttered, feeling foolish. Nothing happened. She wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen, but nothing was definitely not it.   
  
Or the day she had invented her Hemlock and Vanilla perfume, for befuddling men’s wits? She had persuaded Avery to leap out of a second-floor window in order to impress her. She had managed to convince him that nothing was as attractive as broken legs – all with gentle, wide-eyed flattery, smiles, fluttering eyelashes, and the scent of suggestibility.   
  
“Expecto Patronum!” she screamed, but nothing happened.   
  
Or the sight of Malfoy in the oubliette, pacing up and down, with mouse skeletons crunching beneath his feet – wild, unshaven, and wanting her.   
  
It had been difficult to separate the sensation from terror at first, but there it was, much brighter in retrospect: a gloating satisfaction. Being desired by somebody desperate and dangerous. Having a warrior fume and storm and destroy himself over her. She had never felt so powerful, or so excited.   
  
“Expecto Patronum,” she purred, knowing this would work before the words were even uttered. She had forgotten her fear. She was glowing.   
  
A bright, silver-white form shot out of the end of her wand, splitting the darkness into glaring shapes and colours. As Narcissa squinted, and the Dementors backed away, with their scabbed grey hands raised, as though to shield their eyes, she realized that it was a snake. A huge, hooded cobra darting through the air, with coils unfurling like smoke behind its head. It lashed out at the Dementors with its fangs – hissing, and spraying poison.  
  
How proud Malfoy would have been if he could have seen this mark of her Slytherin allegiance! Of course, Bella’s would probably be more terrifying. Bella’s would be passionate, like Lucius in the oubliette. Some kind of fanged, howling, salivating demon. Bella suited him more.      
  
The thrill of seeing her liberator was short-lived. The Dementors were pressing forward, and the bright cobra was flickering – stammering out like the street lamps. Narcissa suddenly felt the cold striking into her chest.    
  
As the light faded, she pressed herself against the wall, trying to avert her face. Lucius was going to be the last thing she ever thought of. She shut her eyes, and remembered his wild blue ones – blood-shot from lack of sleep, and darting with passion and paranoia. _She_ had done that to him.   
  
Suddenly, there was a light glaring through her eye-lids, and she snapped them open, to see a silver form darting around the alley-way, encircling the Dementors, herding them away from her. The Patronus was infinitely brighter than hers had been. It was so swift that it took her a while to work out what kind of creature it was, and by the time she had reached a conclusion, the Dementors had scattered.   
  
The silver doe darted towards a dark-robed figure at the end of the alley-way, and Narcissa barely had time to groan inwardly, before the figure said:   
  
“A snake? Your Patronus is a snake, princess?”   
  
Narcissa dusted down her robes, and then turned to Lily with cool dignity. “What is so funny about that?” she asked.  
  
“Nothing. I’m sure it’s not a Freudian symbol at all.”    
  
The mudblood was smiling. She looked flushed, and her hair was a mess, and her robes were covered with sand, but she was still smiling. Narcissa shuddered inwardly at such a testament to the girl’s pathological lack of vanity. It was especially distressing in a girl who might be considered rather good-looking, because it seemed like carelessness. It seemed like beauty was something she had within her grasp, but wasn’t really interested in.   
  
“What?” said Narcissa coldly, “is a Freudian symbol? Some kind of stupid muggle machine, like a toaster, or a - ,” she shuddered, “car?”   
  
Lily seemed very amused by this. “That’s right,” she said. “It’s like a toaster, except you put in unfulfilled desires instead of bread.”   
  
Narcissa raised her thinly-pencilled eyebrows. “I believe you are making fun of me.”   
  
“Never, princess,” she said solemnly. “What would be the point? Now, are you ready to do something really dangerous?”   
  
Narcissa pressed her lips together, because she knew Lily was not expecting a response anyway.   
  
“Good,” said the mudblood cheerfully. She fished something out of her pocket, and held it up to the newly-ignited street-lamp. “I’ve had time to analyze the contents of this bottle now. The one we found on the window-sill at Borgin and Burkes? It’s Polyjuice Potion. Which means that, if I can get hold of some of your hair, you’re free to go.” She saw Narcissa’s sour expression and added. “Just the ends would be fine, if you’re worried about losing it. It _is_ pretty thin.”   
  
Narcissa put her hands on her hips. “I’m not having a filthy mudblood using my image!” she shouted. “And my hair is _not_ thinning!”    
  
Lily sighed. “We can do this the hard way or the easy way, princess. If you fight me off, I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to control how much of your hair gets cut. Severance Charms require steady hands. So, unless you want a bowl hair-cut on one side of your face, I’d hold still, if I were you.”   
  
This threat was very effective. Narcissa became instantly docile. She winced a little as Lily waved her wand at her glorious, white-blonde hair, but, when she opened her eyes, there was only a thread missing – one of the silvery strands that always hung over her eyes.   
  
“Thanks, princess,” said Lily, feeding the hair through the narrow neck of the potion bottle. “You’ll make sure the Slug Club gets back to the castle by ten, won’t you? Or I might use your image to do something stupid.”   
  
“You are already using my image to do something stupid,” Narcissa replied. “My only comfort is that you will not be alive long enough to do any real damage to my reputation.”   
  
“I’m a fast worker,” Lily said, turning to go. “Diagon Alley’s that way, by the way,” she called over her shoulder. “But I’m sure you knew that.”  
  
  
The Dark Lord sauntered into the muggle-baiting theatre, casting a cursory glance at the prisoner tied to a stake on the central platform, before directing his horrific attention towards Severus.   
  
“You have done well to bring him here, Severus,” he hissed. “Your co-operation will not be forgotten.”  
  
Snape managed a shaky nod. There was a tight knot inside his stomach. He still had a throbbing, sickly headache from prying into Caladrius’s vision, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still in the vision-world, watching the spider crawl across the mirror over that chipped basin, watching the shadows pool around his sunken eyes, and his stark, protruding ribs. A walking cadaver, from this moment on.   
  
When the Dark Lord looked away, he chanced a glance at Caladrius. The Divination teacher was staring at him expectantly. Severus managed a barely perceptible shake of the head. There was no going back now. How could he help Caladrius now? He was sixteen years old, in a room filled with fully-qualified wizards, one of whom happened to be the most powerful of all time.   
  
Lucius Malfoy hurried through the open door behind the Dark Lord, bowed low, and began speaking in an urgent whisper. “My Lord, Rosier had returned from his mission. He wishes to speak with you. He says it is urgent.” Lucius cast an anxious glance at Caladrius. “I would never have interrupted you, otherwise,” he added, with another sycophantic bow.   
  
“Very well, Lucius,” the Dark Lord muttered. There was an air of impatience about him, but he swept out of the room anyway. Rosier was a favourite. He could get away with a lot. The Dark Lord even tolerated his muggle affectations: the constant cigar-smoking, and the ludicrous cowboy-hat. Had anyone else tried that, they would have received a smoking cigar to both eye-balls.   
  
Severus felt his way back to the stone bench shakily. He sank into it a moment before his knees would have given way. A lot of his attention was devoted to the throbbing headache and the nausea, but beneath these sensations, there was one stubborn, nagging little thought that couldn’t be silenced. He would be divided from Lily, no matter what he did. He would kill the Bartender of the Hanged Man, and her fearful respect would be the only thing he had to hope for. He couldn’t have Lily if he was himself, and he couldn’t have her if he was rich, respected and powerful. Wherever he was in the world, she was always just out of reach.   
  
She would also marry James Potter. _Marry_ James Potter! He’d have a license to drool all over her, and press those filthy, Quidditch-Cup-winning hands all over her body.   
  
Everything he’d ever done had been a means to an end. That was how he had got through school: that was why he had thrown himself into his work. He had always told himself: get this essay finished, and she’ll love you. Read to the end of this chapter, even though it’s three a.m. and your brain is screaming for sleep, and you’ll be better than Potter. Talk to this pure-blood imbecile for five more minutes, and you’ll be powerful someday.   
  
But now, there was no end. He couldn’t have Lily. And, if he couldn’t have Lily, what was the point of any of it? He was just working with the means. The means were all he had left, and, even in his surreal state of shock, he began forming a plan around them. The means would be enough. He loved magic: his knowledge was useful, and it had been hard-won. Performing dark magic had been thrilling: it had always been part of a plan, but now it was all he had, and it was what he would cling to. There was no going back.   
  
He would live in magic, if there was nothing else. He would devote himself to devising dark curses and potions. Lives – especially the social kind – were supposed to be very useful, but he could live without them. They were only things made up by muggle advertising companies to sell cars.    
  
Gradually, Severus became aware of his surroundings once more: the dripping stone walls, and some kind of screaming from the muggle-baiting cells. He also noticed that Lucius Malfoy had remained in the room when the Dark Lord left it. There was an air of suppressed excitement about him. He was fidgeting in Snape’s peripheral vision, and it wasn’t helping his headache.   
  
“Get finished with Narcissa early?” he asked distractedly.   
  
“No,” said Lucius, as though he had been bursting to utter these words all night. “She wanted me.”    
  
Snape blinked. “Well, yes, that was the idea.”   
  
“No,” said Lucius proudly. “She wanted _me_. She said: ‘Severus, get out of my room, I want Malfoy.’”   
  
“Oh,” said Snape. “Well, that’s…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. Even in his current state of miserable confusion, he couldn’t be happy that Narcissa had thrown him out of her bedroom – even though it wasn’t _him_ she had actually thrown out. “So you didn’t tell her you were you?” he asked. His throbbing headache was getting louder.    
  
“No. I said I’d get Malfoy to meet her tomorrow night.”   
  
“What are her terms?”   
  
“Terms?”   
  
“Her last name is Black. That means sex is a contract. What does she want in return?”   
  
“Oh,” Lucius shrugged. “I have to take the Unbreakable Vow not to kill her, and to be faithful to her for the rest of my life.”   
  
Severus laughed. He was starting to feel hysterical.   
  
“What?” Malfoy demanded. “I can do it, Severus.”   
  
“Well, you’ll have to.”  
  
“She’s so beautiful,” he enthused.    
  
“And she knows it.” Snape thought for a second, and then added. “You’re not going to torture her, are you?”   
  
“Torture her?” Malfoy echoed incredulously. “I’d rather gnaw my own arm off!”   
  
“Yes, you’re saying that now, because you’re still under the Amortentia. But, when it goes, you’re going to be angry.”   
  
“Never!”   
  
Snape sighed. He was going to have to speak to Narcissa. Get her to add a few more clauses to the contract, or the porcelain bitch would be in danger. He’d given up his only chance at happiness to save her pampered life; he didn’t want it to have been for nothing.   
  
He never expected her to burst into the room, yell “Accio”, and catch the wands that had been Summoned out of his and Malfoy’s hands. But that was what happened.


	48. A Beautiful Accident

Severus stared at the panting, silver-haired girl who’d just stolen his wand. It was obviously – and yet unrecognizably – Narcissa. It was the same shimmering ice-sculpture of a school-girl who sneered and teased and bribed her way around the Slytherin Common-room, but she had a look of concentrated energy about her, like a coiled spring. Her hair was wild and tangled; her eyes – usually so grey and dead-looking – were fierce and alert. There was no more languorous, purring confidence: this was the kind of confidence you got from having three wands in your hand, and remembering a million devastating jinxes that you could channel through them.    
  
Malfoy was opening and closing his mouth like a fish. “N-Narcissa?” he stammered.   
  
“Stay there and shut up,” she muttered, pointing the three wands at him with absent-minded contempt.  
  
She hurried over to Caladrius – still tied to a stake on the central platform – and began fumbling with the ropes that bound him.   
  
“Narcissa?” Malfoy resumed, obviously not knowing what else to say.   
  
Narcissa ignored him.   
  
Severus was too astonished to move. This couldn’t be real. For a moment, he teetered on the edge of laughter. It had to be some kind of joke. Narcissa, the pampered pure-blood – Narcissa, who always knew what was good for her – robbing the most powerful Dark Wizard in history, by herself. No hired lackeys or simpering admirers. No appearance of a plan, either. And yet the energy in those eyes was difficult to argue with.   
  
Severus felt as though he had never seen her before. She was beautiful, but in such a reckless, haphazard way that it reminded him of Lily. It was as though someone had hurled paint at a canvas and created the Mona Lisa; as if a rock-slide had settled into the shape of the Venus de Milo. A beautiful accident. Her robes – usually so figure-hugging – were too big for her. Her shoes were plain black instead of the gold-embossed high-heels that he had learned to recognize. And she was carrying herself differently. The feline grace, the upturned chin, the wrinkle-less smiles were all gone. And she didn’t smell of rotting flowers. Seeing Narcissa without her perfume was a bit like seeing her without her clothes, or without her soul: there was something wrong, but strangely exciting, about it.       
  
And then there were those shining, concentrated eyes, like distillations of electricity.    
  
She was looking at him, almost expectantly. Her mouth was twisted with distaste – and this, too, was bizarre, because Narcissa never used her face for expressions – she was too busy avoiding wrinkles and cultivating an air of charming mystery. But then, as though she had seen what she was looking for, she turned her attention back to Caladrius.     
  
She had no sooner untied him than he sank to his knees, with his hands pressed over his eyes. Narcissa knelt beside him with a look of such tenderness that Severus started to feel light-headed.     
  
“Professor Caladrius?” she murmured. “Can you walk? We’re getting out of here, sir.”   
  
Caladrius just pressed his eyeballs further into their sockets and moaned.   
  
“Narcissa?” Malfoy said again, running his hands through his hair. His voice was shaky. “Please. You can’t do this. I won’t be able to save you.”   
  
“Where’s Voldemort?” she asked distractedly, tucking a lock of that slippery-silver hair behind her ears.  
  
Malfoy drew a sharp breath at the sound of the name, but he was gradually pulling himself together. His breathing was slowing: the sickly pallor was being replaced by the look of determined concentration he’d had in the oubliette, as though there was only one thing in the world that mattered, and she was standing right in front of him, intent on picking Voldemort’s pockets. Severus, bewildered as he was, couldn’t help envying this kind of certainty – even though it was sure to get him killed. It must be nice to have such a clear idea of what your priorities were.   
  
But then, if you had something to lose, it was probably easy to decide what mattered to you.   
  
In just a few hours, Severus had emerged into a world where there was nothing to be lost or gained. Nothing to hope for, and nothing to dread. It didn’t really matter what he did now, so he gave himself up whole-heartedly to the confusion.    
  
“Down the hall,” said Malfoy. “He’ll be back at any minute.”   
  
Her eyes met his. “Keep him busy?” she asked, biting her lip.  
  
There was a silence, in which Malfioy managed to look both proud and terrified. His eyes were wide, his breathing fast, but his chest was puffed out, and he was almost smiling. He took a deep breath, and swept from the room without a word, his black robes billowing importantly behind him.   
  
Severus found himself alone with Narcissa in the muggle-baiting theatre: wandless, miserable and confused. If Caladrius escaped, could the future he’d seen be changed? Would he be able to avoid killing the Bar-tender of The Hanged Man? Would he be able to stop Lily from marrying James Potter?   
  
But there was no beating Voldemort, especially not like this. Narcissa and Malfoy together could barely manage to inconvenience him, with all their Galleons and their pure-blood and their manipulative tactics. If there had been hope, Severus probably would have grasped at it, but this wasn’t hope: this was just stupidity.   
  
He suddenly felt very angry with them both. He wanted to scream at them. Lily was going to marry James Potter, Severus himself was going to become a killer, and all Malfoy and Narcissa could do was try to get themselves killed in feeble and confusing ways. It was so selfish of them.    
  
“You’re asking him to die for you, you know,” Severus said sharply.   
  
“At least I’m asking nicely,” she replied.   
  
In the sudden hush that had descended on the muggle-baiting room, only Professor Caladrius’ moans could be heard. Narcissa was trying to get him to his feet. She wasn’t paying attention to Severus. The three wands were being held loosely in her left hand.   
  
He took a step forward.   
  
“’Cissa,” he said, in a softer tone. “You’re going to get killed, you know that.”     
  
“I’m not Narcissa,” she snapped, throwing him another one of those disgusted looks.   
  
“No, you’re not, are you?” said Snape slowly, looking at her loose-hanging robes and her tousled hair. “Who are you?”   
  
The girl who looked so much like Narcissa didn’t answer.   
  
Caladrius opened his eyes for long enough to cast Severus a look of inveterate loathing. “You should have killed him,” he muttered to Narcissa.    
  
“He’s coming with us,” she replied firmly.   
  
“He doesn’t deserve it.”   
  
“Even so.”   
  
Snape laughed. His throbbing headache, the horrific visions he’d seen in Caladrius’ mind, the hang-over that had been left by Voldemort’s attempts to read his thoughts – they were all making him hysterical. He didn’t see how any of this could be real. It was too bizarre. Pampered pure-bloods being heroic! Malfoy, the skirt-chasing libertine, sacrificing his life for a woman. And a Narcissa-shaped creature being full of energy and determination, letting her hair get messed up, using her face as a canvas for expressions rather than lipstick and eye-shadow.  
  
It was as though Bellatrix had started being kind to animals, or Regulus had declared his undying love for a muggle-born girl.     
  
“Have you gone completely mad?” he said. “There’s no way out of here, and even if there was, I wouldn’t go with you. He’ll get you. You can’t run away from him.”   
  
“Dumbledore will keep us safe,” she murmured defiantly.   
  
Snape threw up his hands. “Dumbledore! All he wants to do is chuckle, and listen to Chamber-music, and eat muggle sweets! He can’t fight!”  
  
He looked into Narcissa’s eyes, which were hooded with shimmering green eye-shadow, and wondered how Voldemort was going to kill her. He had a worrying feeling that he would be made to watch.    
  
Caladrius’ moans redoubled, and Narcissa turned her attention from Severus. The three wands were still dangling tantalizingly in her left hand.   
  
“Professor, what is it?” she asked. “Please get up, he’s coming back, we’ve got to get out of here.”   
  
Caladrius turned his ravaged face upwards. “It’s different,” he gasped. The words seemed to be spilling over his lips without his consent. “Your death is different.”   
  
She looked into his eyes. “Professor, you know who I am?” she asked quietly. “You know I’m not Narcissa?”   
  
A smile of distracted misery crossed Caladrius’ face like a nervous tick. “I know who you are. My visions can’t be fooled with Polyjuice Potion, little girl.”  
  
“And my death has changed?” she asked eagerly. “How? When?”   
  
Caladrius moaned again.   
  
Snape snorted with laughter. “He’s taken Veritaserum. He has to answer you.”    
  
The word escaped Caladrius like a convulsion. “Tonight,” he wheezed.   
  
“Tonight?” she whispered. Snape had never seen those grey eyes so wide and round.   
  
“Well, what did you expect?” he shouted in exasperation. “You don’t steal from the Dark Lord. You’re not a Slytherin, whoever you are, or you’d know that.”   
  
Narcissa still seemed to be catching her breath. Caladrius was frantically avoiding her gaze. Severus suddenly realized that he was the only person in the room who knew where he was.    
  
He tiptoed a little nearer towards her. It was strange how beautiful Narcissa’s face could be, when animated by someone else. When her facial muscles really moved, when her cheeks glowed, when she looked as though she didn’t care how she looked, she had a natural beauty that reminded him of Lily.   
  
But then, everything reminded him of Lily.   
  
He snatched the wands out of her hands just as Voldemort’s voice could be heard in the corridor. Malfoy was obviously stalling him. Severus could hear fragments of agitated conversation. Something about Caladrius displaying all the symptoms of a contagious magical fever. He was a quick-thinker, Lucius, when he cared about something enough to give it any thought.    
  
Narcissa hardly seemed to notice that the wands had been snatched out of her hand. She was still in a state of morbid shock, staring at the floor.   
  
Voldemort’s voice grew louder. “Your concern is admirable, Lucius, but quite unnecessary. Illness could never subdue me.”   
  
“Forgive me, my Lord, but why should we take the risk? You’re on the brink of absolute power. The Ministry of Magic stands ready to fall at your command – for you to be indisposed now - ,”   
  
There was more impatience in Voldemort’s voice when he replied.   
  
“Do you doubt me, Lucius, when I say that no disease – no power on earth – could strike me down? Are you unaware of the measures I have taken to transcend the frailties of wizard-kind? Of mortality itself?”   
  
“No, my Lord.”   
  
“I did not think so. Now stand aside, and we will say no more about this foolishness.”   
  
This was the last warning he would get, Severus could tell that much. Voldemort always wanted to give people the chance to follow his commands willingly. He was vain like that.      
  
The door opened. Evidently, Malfoy had decided not to press his luck.    
  
“It would seem we have an intruder, Lucius.”   
  
Snape, still pointing the three wands directly at Narcissa’s chest, wondered how much of the previous scene Voldemort would be able to guess at. Caladrius’ ropes had been untied. It was obvious that Narcissa had not simply wandered in to watch the interrogation.   
  
He wondered who the Narcissa-creature was. Probably one of Dumbledore’s Order. Maybe one of the Hogwarts teachers, or some big-headed Gryffindor Quidditch player, or a retired Auror. Severus gave a little shudder to think of Mad-Eye Moody – that grizzled collection of scars and impatience – under Narcissa’s skin.    
  
“Miss Black,” Voldemort hissed lazily, “you have an interest in our prisoner?”   
  
“I don’t think it is Narcissa Black, my Lord,” Snape interrupted, hoping that Malfoy was lucid enough to listen. “I think it is one of Dumbledore’s Order who’s taken Polyjuice Potion.   
  
“Well, we will know soon enough,” the Dark Lord resumed. “You did well to detain her until I arrived, Severus. Your initiative is pleasing.”   
  
“Thank you, Sir,” Snape replied. He could see Malfoy edging towards Narcissa out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t dare direct Voldemort’s attention to it.   
  
“Now, shall we wait for the Polyjuice Potion to wear off, do you think?” Voldemort continued. “Or shall we simply give her Veritaserum now, and ask her who she is?”   
  
“My Lord…” Malfoy was standing in front of Narcissa, his breathing very heavy, his white-blonde hair spilling down over his face like icy water. He had lost all the calm and poise and disdain that usually accompanied him.   
  
“My Lord,” he repeated, holding up his hands as though he thought Voldemort’s spells could be fended off or batted away. “There has been a misunderstanding.”   
  
“Malfoy, it’s not her!” Snape shouted in exasperation. “It’s not Narcissa, it’s just one of Dumbledore’s lackeys who’s taken Polyjuice Potion! Get out of the way.”   
  
Malfoy paused, looking down at her. She just gazed back at him, still a curious mixture of intensity and calm. She had looked so far-away since Caladrius had told her that she was going to die tonight.   
  
Malfoy shook his head helplessly. He couldn’t stand to see someone who even looked like Narcissa being handed over to the Dark Lord.   
  
If Amortentia had a flaw, it was that it tended to make the victims concentrate too much on the physical appearance of their loved ones. They carried portraits around, and talked to them, stroked their cheeks, showered the paint-work with kisses. Amortentia meant you loved what you could see. Who your loved one was inside, what she did, was immaterial. It would always be enchanting, because it was done by somebody who had that face.    
  
Malfoy had lived with the poison too long, and it was starting to take its toll. It had wound its way into his soul. Severus wasn’t sure that even the conventional methods would be able to cure him now: even sleeping with Narcissa might prove ineffective. He had started to become the poison. It had seeped through his skin; it was pouring out of him in beads of sweat, and shining in the back of his eyes.     
  
“Enough of this,” drawled the Dark Lord. He flicked his wand lazily and murmured: “Crucio!”   
  
But the spell had not been aimed at Malfoy. Narcissa doubled up with pain, screaming as though her head was going to burst. The sound echoed horribly in the lecture-theatre. It gave Severus goose-bumps. He had never heard that cool, disdainful voice raised to such a height of feeling. It was almost exciting.  
  
Caladrius was shouting too. Severus was reminded of the howling of the Griffin in the oubliette, and it seemed hundreds of thousands of years ago.   
  
Malfoy was just watching, white-faced and tight-lipped. He was going to do something stupid, Severus knew it. For a moment, he considered telling the Dark Lord that Malfoy had been given Amortentia, but he dreaded the rest of the story spilling out. Voldemort’s mental intrusions were hard to block, and Severus was already confused, drained and exhausted. If the Dark Lord learned that he had given Malfoy the Amortentia, everyone was going to be mad at him.   
  
Malfoy was cradling her in his arms helplessly, pushing her sweat-soaked hair off her forehead with a kind of miserable tenderness. Severus started to feel sick.   
  
“It’s not her, you idiot!” he yelled, running his fingers through his hair. Guilt and panic and disgust were pounding in time with his throbbing head-ache, building past endurance like Narcissa’s screams.    
  
Malfoy was going to die. He was going to snap any second, and attack Voldemort. He didn’t even have a wand. And Severus would kill the Bar-tender of the Hanged Man, and Lily would marry James Potter, and it wasn’t _fair_ , any of it. There was no point to it. It didn’t prove anything. It didn’t expand the limits of what magic could do; it didn’t protect wizards from the persecution of muggles – and, worst of all, it didn’t hurt James Potter.    
  
And then Severus realized that he could save Malfoy’s life – at least temporarily – by stunning him. He could sell it to Voldemort that he was disgusted by Malfoy’s disobedience. And Malfoy could answer questions when there was nothing Narcissa-shaped around to distract him.   
  
“Stupefy!” he shouted, and Malfoy crumpled to the floor, beside the still-screaming Narcissa.   
  
“That is enough, Severus,” Voldemort warned, raising his wand.  
  
Silence filled the lecture-theatre. Narcissa was on her knees, white-faced and trembling. She was looking at Severus as though she had never seen him before.   
  
“I just wanted him to cease his wretched disobedience, my Lord,” Severus answered.   
  
His eyes met Voldemort’s, and there was the familiar feeling of mental friction, of rustling paper, while Voldemort flicked lazily through the pages of his mind. But Severus remained calm. The trick was to believe the lie. He did, after all, have a lot of contempt for Malfoy – the spoilt, long-haired pretty boy, who’d been given as many girls and Galleons as he could cope with. More than he could cope with. Stunning him was a perfectly Severus-like thing to do.  
  
At last, Voldemort looked away. Snape could feel his knees trembling.   
  
“Put her in the muggle-baiting cells for the moment, Severus,” he purred. “We will question her when we have dealt with Caladrius.”   
  
“Yes, Sir.” Snape moved over to Narcissa, and eased her onto her feet. She was so light; he could feel every tremor in her body through the thin cotton of her school-robes. Her skin was surprisingly warm and smelled of… gingerbread.   
  
He gave her a push in the small of the back, and opened the door to the muggle-baiting cells. Her cheeks were very pink.   
  
And she smelled of ginger-bread.    
  
Just get on with the job in hand, he told himself. This is probably Potter, or MacGonagall, under Narcissa’s face. They’re probably laughing at you. They probably think you haven’t got the guts to be a Death Eater – that you’re just a little boy who didn’t realize what he was getting into when he joined the Dark Lord.   
  
He pushed her inside the cell. She was docile as a lamb. And, just as the door slammed shut – in slow motion, it seemed to Severus – he saw an unnatural light kindle in those dead, grey eyes – so unlike the smoldering malice that usually burned in them that he started.   
  
It was green. Fresh, brilliant green, like dew-glistening grass. And just as his brain crawled torturously to the conclusion that he’d seen that shade of green before – in his dreams as well as his nightmares – the door slammed shut, with heavy, creaking finality.   
  
And then the Dark Lord spoke. It sounded very far-off to Severus, who was trapped in his own little world of horror, but it got through to him nevertheless, tearing through the shock and confusion, and striking him right between the shoulder blades: “We’ll make an example of this girl, Severus. It seems you will have an opportunity to repay me sooner than either of us expected.”   
  
  
Lily tried to get her bearings in the darkness. It smelled of straw, sweat and cigar smoke, and her first, foolish, thought was that she had been pitched into one of Rosier’s Defence Against the Dark Arts classes, and would be expected to tackle a Boggart in the dark. She could somehow feel the cynical green eyes of her Boggart gloating in the darkness, saying that she’d told her so. What had she expected? A poor, contrite little boy, with his tail between his legs? Had she thought that Voldemort forced him to kidnap Professor Caladrius? Severus had power now. And a way to get back at Potter. It was all he’d ever wanted.    
  
And what he’d done had not been in the heat of anger, like the horrible moment he’d called her a filthy little mudblood. This was premeditated. He must have planned it. Perhaps he’d been planning it even while he was kissing her in that dungeon classroom.   
  
Someone who could kidnap Professor Caladrius, (a helpless old man, distracted with misery), and take him to the most evil dark wizard in history would be unlikely to flinch at the thought of hurting innocent people.    
  
Why had she come here? Love couldn’t reform him. Kindness wouldn’t satisfy him. It was too late.    
  
“I’ve been waiting for you,” said a voice in the darkness.   
  
Lily felt as though a hand had been clamped over her mouth. For a few moments, she couldn’t speak or breathe. A second later, she realized that it was just horror compressing her lungs, but she couldn’t escape the idea that this voice had physically assaulted her somehow.  
  
“Who are you?” she whispered.   
  
“Don’t know that one, love. Sorry. I’d tell yer if I did. But round here they call me Bruiser.”


	49. Less Broken

Severus stared at the door to the muggle-baiting cells. Flashes of the previous scene kept coming back to him – things that had seemed innocent enough at the time, but were now heart-stopping spectacles of horror. It was like waking up with a hang-over and remembering random, disconnected images from the night before – they seemed so unreal, so far-away, and yet each one slapped him in the face like cold water. Like cold water full of razor blades.    
  
It had been Lily.   
  
She’d been put under the Cruciatus Curse.   
  
Malfoy had been cradling her in his arms.   
  
She was going to die tonight.   
  
Severus felt as though he was on an escalator of misery, and there was nowhere to get off. The steps just kept rising and rising and, the higher they got, the less it looked like he would survive the fall.   
  
Mouth dry, and head throbbing, he felt a spreading sense of shame and horror – as though he’d been put under anaesthetic, and it was beginning to wear off. He was discovering new worlds of pain, in parts of him that he hadn’t even known existed.   
  
He wondered what it would be like to die. Would he ever see Lily again? Would his mother be alright, left in that muggle dung-hill with the gin-soaked gorilla she’d married? Would he go to Hell for what he’d done to Malfoy and Caladrius? Or would there be nothing? Would he just stop?   
  
Severus had expected a struggle. He had expected the thought of sacrificing his future to cost him some regret. He had expected to feel proud of what he’d accomplished, and bitter that it was going to be snatched away. But he didn’t. He had thought that these things mattered, but they didn’t. Now that he knew Lily was going to die tonight, the height of his ambition was to die before her, so that he wouldn’t have to watch it.   
  
That was it. He didn’t care about his potential, or his revenge on Potter. He didn’t care about redeeming the lost name of the Princes and making his mother proud. He didn’t care about Dark Magic and terrifying people.   
  
Everything was clear now. Everything was simple. That didn’t make him any less afraid. He still dreaded death. He still trembled at the thought of what Voldemort could do to him.   
  
But the alternative was too horrible to contemplate.   
  
It wasn’t bravery, as such, but a very Slytherin-like compromise. There were some things he could live with, and some things he couldn’t. There was no point living with the things he couldn’t live with, so he had better get ready to die with them.    
  
He was very angry. And, most of all, what he wanted right now was somebody to be angry with besides himself. But there was nobody. No-one had led him astray. No-one had forced him to come here. He’d walked into this with his eyes open. Not even Potter, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, could be blamed for this. Lily had been tortured – had been comforted by Lucius Malfoy – had listened, her mouth twisted with disgust, to Severus ranting and fuming about the superiority of the Dark Lord – and now she was going to die – (Severus twisted his fingers savagely) – and it was _all his fault_.    
  
She had been worried that his friends would be a bad influence on him, but not one of them – not Bella, Avery, Regulus or Malfoy – had made him come here tonight. The plan had been his. He had been the bad influence: he’d dragged Regulus – a fifteen year-old school-boy, who was only on the right plane of reality for two or three hours of the day – into the ranks of the Death Eaters. He’d nearly got Malfoy killed – twice now. And he would have done the same with Narcissa if she hadn’t been too self-centred to ever be vulnerable. She was incorruptible, because she couldn’t get any worse. Her ego was proof against any contamination: she was beyond the reach of any influence, good or bad.   
  
Rosier had wandered into the muggle baiting theatre, his arm around Regulus’ shoulder in a creepy, fatherly fashion, exuding cigar smoke as though he was on fire. While Severus had been staring at the door of the cells in a cold sweat – while he had been lost in this hellish epiphany, - Rosier had been talking to the Dark Lord, and Caladrius had been moaning.   
  
The world went on. It didn’t care that Severus was crumbling. It wouldn’t stop for him to collect himself. He’d better get moving.   
  
  
A match flared in the darkness – and, after years of Lumos Charms and magically-conjured flames, Lily felt a strange sense of anticlimax at the scratching sound and watery light produced by a lit match. She felt as though she had slipped back into the muggle world without knowing it. Perhaps the whole magical world had been a dream – a vivid, terrifying, beautiful dream – and now she was back in Manchester, where fire came from matches, cigarette lighters and Molotov cocktails.   
  
It made the darkness scatter into a mess of flickering, breathing shadows, and illuminated the face of the man who was holding it. It was the kind of face that might have been handsome, once, but had been neglected and probably beaten into a bony collection of wrinkles, scars and stubble. She could make out sandy blonde hair, flecked with iron-grey in places, like sand-stone laced with mineral deposits. And a bare torso of tightly-knotted muscles. The figure did not look healthy, though: he was all lean muscles and bone, with hunched shoulders and veins that stood out on his skin.   
  
He had blue eyes, deep-set, perhaps because they had been pummelled into his face, and he was grinning. The hand holding the match was very steady. His composure even seemed to still the flickering shadows, as though they were sitting up and paying attention. As though this was really important.   
  
“You got my Polyjuice Potion, then?” he asked. His voice was hoarse and crackly – it sounded tinder-dry, as though it was being forced through vocal cords that had long since fallen out of use.  
  
“Yours?” she repeated.   
  
“Well, not entirely,” said Bruiser affably. “Not entirely mine, and not entirely Polyjuice Potion, but, for the sake of simplicity, we’ll say it is. I certainly left it there for you.”   
  
“How did you do that, if you’ve been locked up in here?” Lily asked.   
  
“I don’t need to leave this cell,” he replied. He was still smiling at her, as though nothing could have made him happier than to see a stunned and shaking school-girl pushed into his prison-cell. And that worried her.    
  
“You’re Lily Evans, right?” he went on. “The one whose Boggart is herself?”   
  
Lily decided that, scary as this man was, she wasn’t going to take any more of his cheek. After all, she thought angrily, she was already a prisoner of the most evil wizard who’d ever lived. What was the worst that could happen to her now?   
  
“How do you know that?” she asked sternly.    
  
“I know everything he knows,” Bruiser answered.    
  
“Who?”   
  
“Evans Rosier.”   
  
Well, that made sense; Rosier was the only one who knew about her Boggart (though, she had to admit, he wasn’t exactly discreet; knowing Rosier’s passion for a good story, there were probably swarms of people who’d heard about her Boggart by now). The thought flitted across her mind that someone who’d been locked up in this cell was not likely to be in full possession of their senses. Still, it was better than being out there.   
  
“I’ve waited so patiently for you to turn up,” the voice croaked. It sounded exhilarated.   
  
Lily knew she was going to die tonight. Caladrius had told her so, and he was never wrong. It hadn’t quite sunk in yet – it was too immense to grasp. In just a few minutes – hours at most – she wouldn’t exist. Everything she’d ever thought or felt, every human connection she’d ever forged – were all going to cease, to just go out, like a guttering candle.   
  
She suddenly felt her fear evaporating, leaving a strange kind of tingling chill behind on her skin. That same feverish interest that had gripped her in the Hospital Wing, before she’d discovered the secret chapter in her library book, was prickling through her again. She felt a scholarly detachment that would have been worthy of Margot Holloway – as though she were miles above herself, peering down at the world with benign curiosity.    
  
“Have you been here a long time?” she asked the man.   
  
“Don’t know that, either,” he replied cheerfully. “He puts me under Memory Charms, y’see.”   
  
“And… did he take your wand?”   
  
“Never had one,” Bruiser replied shortly.    
  
“You’re a… a Squib?”   
  
“Worse,” he growled. “A muggle.”   
  
“A muggle?” she breathed. “How did you get here?”   
  
“Rosier puts me under the Imperius Curse and makes me fight other muggles. They call it muggle-baiting. A time-honoured wizard sport. Just as rough as Quidditch, but with the added bonus that no wizards actually get hurt. But ‘e didn’t expect me to be so good at it. There’s one thing we muggles excel at – and maybe it’s the only thing – enduring. We can take all your bloody punishment.”   
  
Lily didn’t know what to say to this, and she was feeling so sick that she wasn’t in favour of opening her mouth anyway – but Bruiser didn’t seem to have been expecting a response.   
  
“So ‘e keeps me,” he went on. “Thinks I’m lucky. Puts Memory Charms on me so’s I don’t run away, looking for friends or family. He made me forget everything – I don’t even know my own name – but there was one thing he couldn’t bury. It’s not a memory, as such. Leastways, nothing you could take out of my mind. It runs through my veins: it lives under my skin. I don’t know who I am, Lily Evans, but I know why I’m here. For revenge.”   
  
“On Rosier?” she asked.  
  
Bruiser snorted. “Him? He’s just a means to an end. A very bloody, satisfying end. See, for almost a year now, I’ve been controlling ‘im, using ‘is own magic. I can’t do none of my own, but I can commandeer his. When you put someone under the Imperius Curse persistently, it forges a kind of connection between the two minds. Unfortunately for Rosier, this connection can work both ways. He forged it, but I can exploit it. My will-power’s stronger than his. It’s something ‘e would never ‘ave planned for – how could a muggle, an animal, get the better of a fully-qualified wizard, using nothing but the wizard’s own power? I doubt even whats-‘is-name in there – you know, the flat-faced one with the red eyes – knows about this kind of magic.”  
  
Silence again. Lily could hear Caladrius screaming outside, but she was so numb with horror, she could barely manage a shudder at this.     
  
“Now, my magical puppet’s going to spring us out of ‘ere in five minutes,” said Bruiser. “Then I’ll need you to help me avenge my loved ones – the only things in the world I ‘aven’t forgotten. Will you do that, if I save you, Lily Evans?”   
  
Lily tried to force her brain to work. “I’m supposed to die tonight,” she muttered, feeling the words echo around the room, and around her suddenly-hollow chest. “I’d kind of like to do that with my family.”   
  
Bruiser snorted again. “If you die there, pretty thing, they’ll die with you, I guarantee it. Better to be with your enemies, at the end, so that if someone gets caught in the cross-fire, at least it’s not someone you like.”   
  
Lily leaned forward, her eyes suddenly hard and business-like. “What exactly does ‘avenging your loved ones’ entail?”    
  
Bruiser laughed. It was a horrible, dry, hacking sound. “And I asked ‘er why she chose you!” The laughter subsided into a series of painful-sounding coughs, and then Bruiser recovered himself. “Right, girl, I’m gonna need you to create a diversion for us. I know you’ll do it. Who in the world can look at poor old Bruiser, when there’s a Lily Evans in the room?”   
  
  
“Dumbledore is clever, my Lord, but hopelessly naïve,” Rosier was muttering, his speech peppered with blasts of cigar-smoke. “He trusts people. That will be his undoing. He believes that I am an eccentric muggle-lover. He believes that I am tormented by my family’s violent past. After all, his own father was thrown in Azkaban for a vicious attack on muggle children. He believes he has met a kindred spirit in me.”   
  
Voldemort seemed to enjoy listening to talk like this. His breathing slowed into a contented hiss, and his red eyes glowed with more than their usual fervour.   
  
It was as though Rosier was trying to distract him – as though he knew what Severus was planning.   
  
Severus felt, for the first time in his life, as though a Hogwarts teacher was on his side. He knew he was imagining it, but it was still heartening. Even if everyone in the world was against him, they could still help him by accident. They could still help him while they thought they were helping themselves.   
  
Rosier droned on about Dumbledore’s various inadequacies – it was clever, Severus thought, the way he did it – he didn’t accuse Dumbledore of being weak or inept, just flawed, just squeamish, just slipping. These things were very soothing for the Dark Lord. He wanted to hear that Dumbledore was a worthy opponent, who would nevertheless be beaten. There was no honour in beating a senile old fool.   
  
Severus moved a little closer to Caladrius, on the pretence of re-tying his ropes. The Divination teacher’s lips were moving soundlessly, and his face was running with sweat.   
  
“You said if I let you out, you could change this,” Severus muttered in an under-tone.   
  
Caladrius handled this well. He didn’t draw attention to himself. He was obviously startled, but he didn’t open his eyes, or cease his distracted muttering. Severus was sure he’d got his attention, however, so he pushed on.   
  
“I can give you an hour,” he said. “But, if you don’t change her death, I’ll kill you myself. And if you think you’re in pain now, you’d better think again. I’ll make the Cruciatus Curse seem like a Tickling Charm – I’ll make carbolic acid seem like lemonade – if you don’t save her. Do you understand me?”   
  
Caladrius, eyes still tight shut, gave a barely perceptible nod.   
  
“Shut your eyes when you hear the words ‘Slytherin thug’.” Snape instructed. “And be ready to run. No more sinking to your knees and moaning, or I’ll give you something to really moan about.”   
  
The Dark Lord cut in at this point. He couldn’t have contained his impatience any longer anyway. He walked up to Caladrius and ran his long, white fingers over the man’s throat. Caladrius started screaming in earnest.   
  
“Dear, dear,” Voldemort murmured. “This does not bode well for the remainder of our conversation, Caladrius. You will tell me what you see.”   
  
Caladrius, eyes tight shut, face screwed up in pain, gasped: “Nothing.”   
  
“Nothing?” Voldemort repeated.   
  
“I see nothing,” Caladrius gasped. “Blackness.”   
  
“Why would blackness make you scream?” Voldemort asked, with impeccable logic.   
  
“I’ve never seen it before,” Caladrius whispered.   
  
The Dark Lord drew a deep, hissing, triumphant breath. It raised goose-bumps along every inch of Snape’s skin. “Then I do not die,” he murmured, almost to himself. “I succeed in conquering death. I have, perhaps, already succeeded.”   
  
Severus, who knew better than anyone the loop-holes in Veritaserum, thought that Voldemort wasn’t asking enough questions. But he was too busy steeling himself to do something suicidal to give it much thought. He was staring at the damp, stone walls of the lecture-theatre, behind the rising tiers of stone benches. The torch-light was glinting off the dripping stone, and it reminded him of the bars of amber street-light that would shine onto the ceiling in his bedroom in Spinner’s End. He even thought he could hear muted shouts and thumps shaking the floor beneath him, as they always did when his mum and dad were fighting.    
  
He was sinking through the bed, into the cool, comforting dark.   
  
The next thing he knew, Voldemort was turning that flat, chalk-white face towards him.    
  
“Are you ready to prove your allegiance, then, Severus?”   
  
Snape gave him a twisted smile. “Let me duel her, my Lord,” he murmured. “Let me show her that blood-traitors and muggle-lovers have no right to hold a wand.”    
  
He met Voldemort’s eyes with distracted enthusiasm. “Let me show her what she’s up against before she dies,” he implored.   
  
At last, Voldemort broke eye-contact. There was a cruel smile curling his thin lips.   
  
“Rosier, this boy’s ghoulish enthusiasm would be worthy of Bellatrix Black,” he murmured. “I wish you to know, Severus, that we are going to win this war. But we are going to win it in style. Unlike Dumbledore and his foolish Order, there will be no necessity for my followers to play it safe in order to ensure victory. Victory is already assured. And you may torture her to the utmost of your ingenuity, because Lord Voldemort – as ever – is in control.”   
  
Severus managed a smile. He was still holding Lily and Malfoy’s wands – and he selected hers. He had no trouble in recognizing it now. Ten and a quarter inches. Willow. He’d been there when she’d bought it. He had seen goose-bumps on her skin as she’d held it. He had felt all her exhilaration, all her wonder, probably more intensely than she’d felt it herself. She didn’t know what the wand meant. It meant freedom. It meant no more car-fumes, or smoking-chimneys, or block-headed muggle children.   
  
To Severus, it had symbolized their birth-right, their power, their life together. But it hadn’t worked out that way. The magical world was no better than the muggle one – it was just more colourful.     
  
There was the question of whether or not she’d trust him, of course. He had kidnapped her favourite teacher and brought him to the Dark Lord. He had Stunned Malfoy when he’d been trying to comfort her.    
  
That was still a very painful thought. Malfoy holding her in his arms while she’d writhed in agony, brushing her sweat-soaked hair off her forehead.   
  
Stay calm. There’s no making it right now. You can’t fix it; you can only make it less broken. And that’s your life from now on. It’s not perfect, but you don’t deserve perfect. And any time you think you deserve to be happy, just remember Malfoy holding her in his arms while she was under the Cruciatus Curse, pushing her hair back tenderly.   
  
You did that.   
  
Malfoy – _Malfoy_ – comforted her when she was being tortured. And all you did was watch.     
  
You didn’t just watch, you Stunned the one person who was trying to console her.   
  
You deserve to die.   
  
Happiness now is trying to get your loved ones out of the hole you’ve dug for yourself, before the earth covers them.   
  
So concentrate, you bastard.   
  
He pulled back the bolt on the door of the cells, and saw her blinking in the sudden light. The Polyjuice Potion had worn off. She was Lily again – a little paler, but still composed, half her face hidden by that soft, blood-red hair that glowed like stained glass.   
  
She got shakily to her feet, and Severus felt all the weight of her disappointed gaze. If he hadn’t been so deeply sunk in his Occlumency State, he honestly believed it would have killed him.   
  
“Here,” he said jerkily, thrusting her wand at her, and smiling unpleasantly. “Take it. You think you have a right to hold a wand? Well, prove it, mudblood. Defend yourself.”   
  
She emerged, blinking, into the light of the muggle-baiting theatre, and held out her hand for her wand. There was a hard look in her eyes. She was blinking back tears, but her mouth was set and her gaze steady. Her head was raised proudly. She was glad it had come to this. She was going to die on her feet, with her wand in her hand. She would die like a witch, not like a muggle.   
  
She looked so fierce and pitiless that it gave Severus goose-bumps. He felt in awe of her composure. And he buried the heart-rending grief that was threatening to overwhelm him under a grim, twisted smile.      
  
“Let’s see what you’re really capable of, without Dumbledore’s molly-coddling, mudblood,” he purred. “Show me what you can do, Gryffindor scum.”   
  
He saw her falter. Her green eyes widened. But she was quick-witted and capable. She didn’t give away her shock. It was visible in the tiniest tremor of her hand, and then her defiance closed over it, and her mouth spread into a contemptuous smile.   
  
“Slytherin thug,” she muttered.    
  
Snape yelled “Avada Kedavra!” just as Lily cried “Expelliarmus!”   
  
It had to be the killing curse. Voldemort would have been suspicious otherwise. Snape’s only comfort was that, even if this didn’t work, the Avada Kedavra curse would still sail harmlessly over her head, because you had to mean it, with Unforgivable Curses, and Snape couldn’t mean it. It was like Malfoy said. It would be like gnawing your own arm off.    
  
In the split second before the spells met, he saw Caladrius clamp his eyes shut. But then there was nothing more to see. A bright light engulfed the room. Snape could see it even through his closed eyes. It illuminated the veins of the inside of his eye-lids in sickly, red detail. He felt the light pass through his chest, clearing out the cob-webs as it did so, dissolving the fear, leaving behind a lingering sensation of warmth, exhilaration, and the smell of gingerbread. It was the feeling of being trusted. Snape had forgotten, under all the other things that had been clamouring for his attention, how good it felt.   
  
He felt like he was back at the Summer Ball, saving Lily from the boring Gobstones statistics of Hector Janus. And everything that had happened since then – all the pain of their separation and misunderstandings – was wiped out. They were together again, fooling everyone, and giggling about Mrs Potter's failure to take contraceptive potions when she really needed to.     
  
And, when he opened his eyes, Rosier and his muggle – the grizzled, bare-chested fighter that was known as Bruiser – had untied Caladrius, and were beckoning him and Lily to the door.


	50. Two Romantic Reunions

Lily grabbed his arm (none too gently) and pulled him to the door. Voldemort was doubled-up, clutching his eyes and screaming. It was a horrible sight; that shrill, high-pitched voice clamouring, those spider-like hands shooting curses, completely at random, around the room. Severus could see the green light of the Avada Kedavra Curse bouncing off the walls, and he pushed Lily through the door in a fit of panic.   
  
He wondered whether the curses would hit Regulus or Malfoy.   
  
Well, it wasn’t his fault. They had _asked_ for this. They had signed up to fight in a war; Lily hadn’t. She was the only thing that mattered now.     
  
Rosier and the muggle, propping Caladrius up between them, were already outside in the street, as Severus and Lily hurtled through the bar of the Hanged Man and out of the door.   
  
“Can’t Apparate in there,” the muggle gasped. “Old Snake-face has protective spells in place. Now grab on to Rosier, Miss Evans, and your sour-faced friend too, if ‘e can’t mind ‘is own business, and we’ll get out of here.”   
  
But Severus grabbed her shoulder as she reached for Rosier. “We’re not going anywhere with them,” he said breathlessly, trying to sound calm and reasonable and unafraid. “We’re going straight to Dumbledore. The Dark Lord won’t be able to get you there.”    
  
“What makes you think it’s the Dark Lord that’s going to kill ‘er?” the muggle asked jovially.    
  
“I said I’d go with him,” Lily muttered, shrugging away from his hand coldly.   
  
Severus ran his fingers through his hair. Even in the midst of his terror, he was hurt. Not surprised, exactly, but hurt. He felt as though he was back in the Hospital Wing, being glared at for kissing her when she didn’t know what she was doing.   
  
“Look, I don’t understand any of this!” he shouted. “What in the hell is going on?”  
  
“It’s OK,” she said. “Bruiser’s put Rosier under the Imperius Curse.”   
  
“But he’s a muggle!” Snape protested. “He can’t put anybody under anything.”   
  
“I could put you under a bus,” the muggle growled.   
  
“It’s Rosier’s magic,” she breathed. “He’s just…borrowing it.”   
  
Snape passed an exasperated hand over his eyes. “Does that sound like something that could plausibly happen?”   
  
“I wouldn’t have thought that you selling innocent teachers to the most evil dark wizard in history could have plausibly happened,” she replied coldly. “We live in a world of surprises.”   
  
There was a sound of breaking glass from the Hanged Man, and then the slow, building crackle of burning timber. The muggle winced. “Foe Fire,” he said, with a low whistle. “You really made ‘im angry.”   
  
Severus shut his eyes. The pounding headache was clouding his senses. He felt as though his head was filling up with mist. He stayed like this for what seemed like hours, and might have been forever, if Lily’s voice hadn’t come back to him, softer this time, but still prickling with coldness. Still, the ice was thawing. Even in her current, desperate situation – even knowing she was going to die tonight – she still had sympathy to spare for others. Lily was a strange woman in life-or-death situations – hard and soft at the same time.   
  
“There’s no time for this,” she said, with gentle disdain. “Come with us, or don’t, Sev. But we’re leaving.”     
  
It was going to get her killed, of course, this sympathy. But maybe, for every person that took advantage of her because of it, there was one that was so grateful they’d die for her. And, if enough people stood between her and Voldemort over the years, she might survive.  
  
Snape grabbed on to her outstretched hand, and saw Rosier turn on the spot, looking dazed but happy. Then he felt the familiar, uncomfortable, ear-popping, lung-squeezing sensation of Apparition.  
  
And, as his feet left the cobble-stones of Knockturn Alley, he remembered, with a surreal, hollow feeling, that Malfoy was unconscious, and Regulus blind, in a room that was being engulfed by malicious, conscious fire. There was now no chance that either of them would survive. Those stupid, pampered pure-bloods, desperate to be part of something dangerous, when they’d had everything they could possibly have wanted from the beginning – riches, respect, doting parents, and girls mobbing them at every turn. What did they need to go joining the Dark Lord for?    
  
When he opened his eyes again, all he could see was a vast black ocean, pounding against some jagged rocks fifty feet below. He staggered backwards, reaching out for Lily, but she had withdrawn her hand and stalked off, arms folded against the cold, her eyes bright and resentful.   
  
He tried to get his bearings. He never liked to look confused in front of her. They had Apprated to a freezing cliff-top. The cold was so intense, after the window-less, stifling muggle-baiting theatre, that it was a whole species of physical pain. It felt as though jagged little ice-crystals were forming in his blood, frosting his lungs, turning his nose into an icicle. He was grateful for it, in a way; it was a welcome distraction from Lily’s disappointed gaze – from the knowledge that she had been tortured – from the horrible prediction that she was going to die tonight. At least this cold had the decency to stay outside his heart.   
  
He had wanted to show her that he could take care of her.      
  
Don’t think about that. Not now. Concentrate on getting her through tonight alive, and you’ll have plenty of time for reproaching yourself when they throw you in Azkaban.  
  
Everything was black on the cliff-top, but in so many varying shades that Severus felt as though he was in another world. There was the charcoal-grey of the cliffs, the bruise-purple sea, the jet-blue sky, and a thousand moving, squawking shadows darting across it. There must have been birds nesting in the cliff-face below, because these tattered shapes were flying everywhere, detaching themselves from the darkness with a squawk, and then melting back into it silently. There was a whole rainbow of night-colours here. It was as complicated, as textured, as the daylight world. He thought of the eye-lacerating brightness in McGonagall’s Transfiguration classes and shuddered.   
  
He would be in love with the dark his whole life. Darkness, magic and Lily. But only the darkness loved him back.   
  
Rosier was pacing around, casting protective spells around their location. Caladrius had crumpled onto the grass, and was pressing his face against it, mopping up the life-giving coolness. Lily was watching the muggle warily.   
  
He had put on a cloak now – a waist-length cloak over his bare torso and tattered jeans. He didn’t seem to be feeling the cold, though. He was rubbing his hands together enthusiastically, a boyish light in those bright blue eyes. Snape was reminded forcibly of Dumledore.   
  
“They can’t find us here, right?” Lily asked anxiously. “There’s no way to track an Apparition.”   
  
“Ordinarily, no,” said the muggle brightly. “But Rosier here has the Dark Mark. Snake-face can track that anywhere.”   
  
“You mean he knows we’re here?” Snape asked angrily.   
  
“Yes and no,” said Bruiser. “There’s no way to detach the Dark Mark with any conventional magic. It wouldn’t be such a life-time pledge if a wizard could just scrape it off using Scouring Solution, or Mrs. Scower’s All-purpose Magical Mess Remover. That ain’t so all-purpose as Mrs. Scower wants you to think. Short of cutting your arm off – and I’d be tempted, but it’s on ‘is wand-arm, and we need that – there’s no gettin’ rid of it.” He shot Severus a penetrating look. “You remember that, sonny. Once you take the Dark Mark, it’s never comin’ off. They dig you up a hundred years after you’re dead, and it’ll still be burnt into your skeleton.”   
  
“Well, after blinding him and stealing his prisoners,” Snape replied coldly, “I don’t suppose there’s much chance that he’ll be taking me on as an apprentice now.”  
  
Bruiser chuckled. “Well, you never know. As your pretty friend says, we live in a world of surprises.”   
  
“So how are we supposed to hide from him?” Lily asked impatiently.    
  
“I’ve done what I can to dampen the homing effects of the Dark Mark,” he replied, still as happy as ever. “Voldemort knows we went North, but ‘e doesn’t know where exactly. I’m pretty sure ‘e’ll assume we’ve gone to Hogwarts. Dumbledore’ll be able to stall ‘im once ‘e gets there. Incidentally, missy,” he said, turning to Lily, “Dumbledore can track you just as effectively. The Light Mark acts as a homing-beacon too, and everyone who has it can track everyone else who has it. It’s a lot more democratic than the Dark Mark.”    
  
“What the hell is the Light Mark?” Snape demanded.   
  
Lily was obviously not in the mood for explaining. She shot him another reproachful look and moved off to comfort Professor Caladrius.   
  
Snape stood forlornly on the cliff-top and contemplated throwing himself off it. It was cold, Lily hated him, and he was aching all over. But Dumbledore knew exactly where they were, and Voldemort didn’t. That was some comfort. But Voldemort was better than Dumbledore. There was nothing he wouldn’t do, and that, as any Slytherin could tell you, always made people more efficient.    
  
The starlight was brilliant. There was grass underfoot, quite dry, and spangled with daisies – an ebony green shot with little star-like flowers. He sat down, pulled his knees up to his chest, and contemplated his surroundings.    
  
Behind him, what he had at first thought of as more cliff, was now revealed to be a cube-shaped fortress of black rock, surrounded by ramparts. Severus had seen the wizard-prison in children’s books – books with moving pictures that had always made his father angry and his mother sad. Fascinated as Snape had been by everything connected to the wizard world, he remembered looking at the books with a volatile mixture of terror and excitement. How much reading could they get through, before Tobias Snape snatched the book away, and threw it out of the open window? Would he get to hear the story of the Three Brothers before his mother was overcome with tears?    
  
“This is Azkaban,” said Lily, looking up from Caladrius. Her voice was quite calm, but there was an accusing note in it. The muggle grinned.   
  
“You think I’m planning some kind of prison-break, don’t you, girl?” he asked, apparently delighted by the idea. “And you don’t know how funny that is, because the only prisoner I wanted to bust out of ‘ere was sneaked out by your good self three months ago.”   
  
Lily drew a sharp breath, but he continued, apparently enjoying the dramatic effect his words were having. He had a little of Rosier’s showman-ship, that muggle.   
  
“No-one’s ever escaped from Azkaban, they say. The Dementors can smell escape-plans, ‘cause they can smell hope. They suck it out of you, whatever you’re thinking – tunnels, riots, rescues, disguises – there ain’t nothing that gives you comfort that they can’t eat. But they see you, Miss Evans – a woman with joy so intense and so scattered that it’s difficult for them to keep track. And when you leave, they know there’s something different about you, but it’s like trying to find a crumb in a bakery. They’re confused. They sense one tangled web of joyful woman come in, they sense one tangled web of joyful woman leave.”   
  
“You’re talking about Guillotine Valance?” she interrupted, unable to stand the suspense. “But, _she_ didn’t escape; it was just her memories. She’s dead. She’s been dead for years.”   
  
“But those memories are alive,” he muttered, grinning. “After you smuggled them out of Azkaban, they used to wander about the Hogwarts corridors at night, did you know that? Crept out of Dumbledore’s office, and wandered around, in different shapes: sometimes a silver doe – she liked that shape – sometimes a beautiful woman with baby-blonde curls. Freaked the Hogwarts ghosts out, she did – not quite dead and not quite alive. They didn’t know what to think. Rosier met ‘er in the Hogwarts corridors one night when he was up to something he shouldn’t’ve been. And everything Rosier sees, I see.”   
  
“But why should you care about helping Guillotine Valance?” Lily demanded.   
  
“Her name was Maggie,” Bruiser said sharply. Then his face clouded with confusion, and he added: “Leastways, I think it was. She was my wife. They were my children, the ones the goblins carved up for treasure. But the goblins would never ‘ave got ‘em if we ‘adn’t been betrayed. Someone close to Maggie kidnapped the children, and brought ‘em to the goblins. And we’re here to kill that someone.”   
  
“How do you know that someone is here?” Lily asked, her mouth a curly line of nausea and sympathy.   
  
“Idris Mulligan? She lives ‘ere, don’t she? The Queen of the Dementors, they call ‘er down Knockturn Alley. Dark wizards tell their kids that she commands the hordes of despair. And after she’s set her little pets on you, after there’s not a grain of hope left in your body, she throws it to the goblins, to make jewelry out of.”  
  
Lily stared at him. “But she’s just a mad old woman!” she protested.   
  
“Been a friend o’the Valance family for years,” Bruiser went on, apparently not hearing her. “Used to be Maggie’s baby-sitter.”   
  
“But you said yourself there are things you don’t remember,” Lily argued. “How do you know for sure she betrayed you?”   
  
“I wrote it down,” he said cheerfully, rolling up the leg of his jeans. “I couldn’t keep no paper in that cell, and Rosier would ‘ave seen if I’d written it anywhere that weren’t usually covered. So I wrote it on my leg.”   
  
Carved into the flesh just above his knee were the words Idris Mulligan.  
  
“Told yer it was under my skin, didn’t I?” he prompted, grinning broadly, as though he was proud of this twisted ingenuity. “Told yer it was in my veins.”     
  
“Shame she had to have such a long name,” Snape pointed out. Lily shot him a scandalized look, and then asked Bruiser, in a gentle voice, what they were waiting for.   
  
“The changing of the guard,” he said mysteriously, and went off to tend to Professor Caladrius, adding: “No offence, missy, but Rosier here knows more healing magic than you, though ‘e wasn’t smart enough to get ‘imself branded with the Light Mark. We’d better take care of ‘im.”     
  
Lily went to join Severus on the cliff-top, looking out over the churning black ocean. He could tell she was frightened and irritable, and that she was trying not to make it worse by shouting. But, obviously, she couldn't think of anything calm to say. For a few moments, neither of them spoke; then she said coldly.   
  
“You've finally come to your senses, then. It took you long enough.”   
  
“I didn’t know it was you,” he muttered.   
  
“Why should that make a difference?” Lily asked sharply. “You’d happily watch Narcissa die, would you?”   
  
“Not _happily_ …” Severus mumbled, shrugging.   
  
“Why did you do it?”   
  
She wasn’t judgemental, Lily. She had very strong feelings, and they were easily revolted, but she always tried to see things from another’s point of view.   
  
Severus shook his head, flushed and miserable, and plunged his hands into the pockets of his robes. He couldn’t explain. He couldn’t talk about the Rosura potion, or her friendship with Potter. She probably wouldn’t see these as valid reasons, anyway. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure that even he did anymore.   
  
“I just…” Snape trailed off. “I wanted to be somebody.”   
  
“A Dark Wizard?” Lily asked. There was scorn creeping into her voice now, and it made Severus defensive.    
  
“Not especially,” he said, shrugging. “It was just what I was best at.”   
  
“Is that all you have to say?” Lily asked. She was keeping her condemnation back. She was giving him a chance to explain himself. But this only made Severus feel more wretched. He didn’t deserve it.   
  
He had disappointed her. He’d been useless to her – worse than useless – when she was being tortured. While she’d been risking everything for friends who didn’t deserve it, he’d been wallowing in his own misery, taking his anger out on helpless old men, and bribing the Dark Lord to murder a school-boy. And although Potter – that disgusting, arrogant creep – was not just any school-boy, he was not worth losing Lily over.   
  
He could feel her anger, her revulsion, battering at the dam of civility she was maintaining, and it would break at any second. He didn’t want her to be disgusted with him. He wanted to say something to exonerate himself. He wanted to explain that he’d been angry. That was it. It sounded like such a stupid explanation, but it contained everything. It was the motivation for everything he’d done since kissing Lily in the oubliette.   
  
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You…” Severus tried to pull himself together. He was probably going to die tonight. What did it matter, if she knew the truth? He _wanted_ her to know the truth, didn’t he? Or some of it, anyway.   
  
But when he’d envisioned telling Lily about his feelings for her, it had always been in a romantic setting. Not on a storm-battered cliff, far out to sea, hiding from Death Eaters and Dementors, trying to explain why he’d kidnapped her favourite teacher and sold him to the Dark Lord.   
  
Everything was wrong, everything was backwards. It struck Severus so forcibly that he could feel his eyes burning with tears. He blinked them away, pretending to be interested in a puffin’s nest on the cliff face below them, but the cold, sucking hollow in the middle of his chest only expanded.   
  
He had wanted to impress her. And all he had done was get her tortured.    
  
“You went off with Potter…” he said miserably. “And, when I asked you if you remembered what happened in the oubliette – with the Rosura and…” he couldn’t finish that sentence, so he leapt into another one, just as painful. “When I asked you, you said… you said ‘Just make sure it doesn’t happen again’.”   
  
Lily gave an involuntary shudder, but recovered herself. Snape’s misery deepened. Was she thinking about how he’d kissed her in the oubliette? Did she really feel like he’d taken advantage of her?  
  
“You want to know something?” she said, staring out at the swirling ocean. “I thought you were talking about putting the Cruciatus Curse on Malfoy. I didn’t remember about… you know… any of that. Not all of my memories came back at once.”   
  
Severus blinked. “So you… you remember now?” he asked.   
  
“Yes,” she said, staring vacantly out to sea. “Now I do.”   
  
Severus was silent. He was happy that she wasn’t looking at him, because he couldn’t keep his feelings in check. He’d pinned them down too much tonight, and there was some kind of mutiny going on inside his chest. His heart was thumping rebelliously. And the cold hollow in the middle of his chest, that had been engulfing everything, contracted suddenly. Even on the frost-bitten cliff, with the salt spray of the North Sea being whipped into his face, he felt warmer.   
  
Still, he had to remember where he was, and what had happened. Even if she had felt something for him, how could it still be there after everything he’d put her through tonight?  
  
“What did you think when you remembered?” he asked, keeping his voice determinedly casual.   
  
“I didn’t have much time to think,” Lily confessed. “Slughorn came up to me the next second and told me Professor Caladrius had been kidnapped.”   
  
“Right,” said Severus. The hollow feeling was back.   
  
Lily was still staring out to sea. “I’m not going out with Potter,” she said, still in that vaguely irritated tone.   
  
Severus didn’t say anything. He stared straight ahead of him and told himself not to hope. She could be telling him that for any number of reasons.   
  
“He just felt terrible that Malfoy had used his map to get into the castle,” she continued. “He was nice to me.”   
  
Severus resisted the urge to wonder aloud why he’d been so nice to her. He resisted the urge to say: “Oh, as long as somebody’s nice to you, it doesn’t matter how many first-years they jinx, does it? _Polite_ bullies are fine, aren’t they? It doesn’t matter how much time they spend looking in the mirror, or how many sycophantic, giggling goons they surround themselves with, as long as they’re suitably apologetic, when it’s too late to do anything about it.”   
  
These bitter reflections were interrupted by the words: “If I _had_ remembered, I would have told you I was glad it happened,” she said, looking up, her eyes bright and fierce. “I would have told you that I liked you. But I _didn’t_ remember. And you took Professor Caladrius to Voldemort. There’s nothing we can do about that now. So let’s forget it.”   
  
And, as Severus stared at her, heart in his throat, and burning with bitter excitement, he realized that this was the best he could have hoped for. He realized that he wouldn’t have loved her so much if she’d forgiven him. She wouldn’t have been Lily. She wouldn’t have been so many miles’ distant from the cool, dishonest, manipulative Narcissa, if she didn’t put her feelings away and do the right thing.   
  
He looked away, unwilling to betray his feelings, filled with fierce, hopeless, miserable ecstasy. She liked him. Or, she had done, once. It was enough. It was excruciating, but it was enough. He was happy.   
  
“I did the right thing in the end,” he said, shrugging. “That’s got to count for something.”   
  
“It does,” she replied coolly. “It’s the reason I haven’t slapped you in the face.”   
  
Severus smiled. It had been so long since he’d done this that his face hurt, as though she really had slapped him. Whenever he spoke to Lily, it always felt like a playful conversation by the canal-side in Manchester, or a whispered exchange in the library about Madam Pince’s musty smell. However long they had been apart, whoever they had been hanging out with in the meantime, they always settled back into this kind of talk – this cheerful discussion of absolutely nothing. She just couldn’t be serious. It was unspeakably comforting, after everything that had happened tonight.   
  
“Thanks for doing what you did,” she murmured.   
  
“Don’t,” Snape interrupted. “Seriously. Don’t do that. It was – literally – the least I could do.”   
  
“What are you going to do now?”   
  
He shrugged. He didn’t really want to think about that. He was with Lily, and she was talking to him. Something so rare and wonderful shouldn’t be interrupted with thoughts of the future.   
  
She shivered again, and edged nearer to him, resting her head on his shoulder. Severus put his arm around her, and breathed in the ginger-bread scent of her hair. He wanted time to stop right here. He wanted to topple off this moment’s brink into oblivion, or eternity, or whatever there was. If time went on, it would only drag her from him.    
  
“What on earth made you want to be a Dark Wizard?” she asked lightly.      
  
“You don’t understand,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “It’s different for you. The people you love, they… they don’t _want_ anything from you.”   
  
Lily looked up at him petulantly. “My sister wants me to leave Hogwarts and give up magic,” she muttered.   
  
“Well, that’s one idiot,” Snape said flatly. “One idiot, you can ignore.”   
  
“I can’t believe how much she hates me,” Lily muttered distractedly.   
  
“I can believe it,” Severus said darkly.    
  
“You think she’s just a hateful person,” Lily said accusingly. “But she’s not. Before I went to Hogwarts, we were so close.”  
  
“She was a bitch before you came to Hogwarts,” Severus pointed out. “If she’s jealous of you, it’s for more fundamental reasons.”   
  
“What are you saying?”   
  
“I’m saying her sister already had the looks and the brains. When she got the magic as well, it was just too much. The last straw for Petunia Evans. She had to hate you. No other choice.”   
  
“But she’s pretty,” Lily protested warmly. “And she’s good at lots of things.”   
  
“Like noticing when somebody’s shoes are scuffed?”  
  
Lily smiled in spite of herself. “You know, we’re never going to be friends if we stay on this subject.”   
  
“I thought you didn’t want to be friends.”   
  
“I said it didn’t _matter_ whether we were or not,” she corrected him. “On account of the fact that we’re both probably going to be hunted down by Voldemort and killed.”   
  
“If we’re lucky,” Snape added.   
  
She giggled.   
  
He realized that this kind of flippancy in the face of certain death was the most comforting thing he could possibly imagine. Even a complete lack of danger wouldn’t have been so good. They were both being completely mad, of course, but they were together, and there was a kind of peace between them that Snape hadn’t felt for a long time. They accepted each other. And he would have felt bitter that this connection – the best thing he’d ever had in his short, miserable life – was going to be torn away from him, but he was too amazed that he’d had it in the first place. It was all a matter of perspective. He hadn’t been dealt a fair hand in life – his disappointments had been unremitting – but he could still marvel that there was somebody who wanted to stick with him, in spite of everything. He’d been dealt a bad hand, and he’d still won the pot. It was just that he wasn’t going to have it for very long.    
  
“We can be friends for now,” she said, smiling slyly. “Until either Dumbledore or Voldemort gets here. And then, for one reason or another, we’ll never speak to each other again. How does that sound?”   
  
Snape buried his face in her hair for a moment, screwing his whole body up against the tide of hopeless, miserable joy that was trying to get out of him – that was trying to find expression, any way it could. After a few seconds, he emerged, in perfect control again, with only a slight film over his eyes to show that there had been any feeling at all.    
  
“It’s not ideal,” he said, in a business-like manner. “But it will have to do.”   
  
  
In the smoking remains of the Hanged Man in Knockturn Alley, something was stirring.   
  
It was a slim, silvery something – a creature that would have been described by Professor McGonagall as a ‘slip of a girl’, if McGonagall hadn’t already been in the habit of secretly referring to this particular girl as ‘the porcelain bitch'. She was dressed impractically in gold-embossed high-heels, and kept slipping on patches of charred timber, or puddles of Firewhisky.   
  
There were little fires still blazing here and there around the wreckage, and everything was smoking, because a light, sifting rain had begun to fall, hissing on the hot skeleton of the building. Nobody had come out to investigate the fire. People minded their own business in Knockturn Alley. As long as there were Fire-proofing Charms on their own dwellings, they didn’t worry about their neighbours. Chances were, their neighbours had done something to deserve it.    
  
There were roof beams still standing in the tavern, but she didn’t like the look of them. She picked her way daintily through the wreckage with her arms raised, to shield her head from any falling timbers. Her face was smeared with ash, and she was crying, but these were only dry sobs, as though the full fury of her grief had passed, leaving only a few hiccoughing spasms. Narcissa would have liked to have cried for Malfoy – she had never felt so miserable, so cheated, in her life – but the tears wouldn’t come. She had been trained from birth to avoid crying, because it was unflattering. It made her face look puffy and red, and spoiled her painstakingly applied make-up. From the age of two, she had been mistakenly identified as an angelic child, because, unlike her sisters, she hadn’t marred her face with furious tears, or strained her voice with screaming. There had been no point to it. She could get everything she wanted by smiling – by charm and flattery. Tantrums were inelegant.    
  
Her make-up was running now, though, because of the rain, and the waves of heat that were emanating from the ruin. Watery streaks of mascara were running down her face, and her eyes were ringed with green, from where her dragon-scale eye-shadow had been smeared.   
  
There was a tight knot in her chest that could never be unraveled now. Malfoy was dead. And nobody else could untie it. It was like the Gordian knot. The finest minds in Ancient Greece hadn’t been able to undo it, but Alexander the Great solved this riddle in style by simply cutting the knot with his sword.   
  
That was the kind of solution she would have got from Malfoy. No thinking, just a whole lot of feeling. She didn’t want Snape’s cerebral sarcasm; she just wanted to be with her desperate warrior.   
  
She paused in what was left of the doorway to the muggle-baiting theatre. This room was stone, so less damage had been done to it. The walls were painted thick with ash, and the doorways were hollow sockets, but the stone benches remained – cracked and glowing-hot. Most of the ceiling – which had not been made of stone – had fallen in, and Narcissa, blinded with the tears she couldn’t shed, looked for the body of her loved one.   
  
What would be left? A skeleton? She had seen enough of them. She’d grown up staring with revulsion at her father’s collection of unicorn skeletons. And it was a Black family tradition to decapitate dead House-Elves and mount their shrunken heads on the walls.        
  
Narcissa had seen death from a very early age. It was the inevitable consequence of growing up in a family that was fascinated by the Dark Arts. But she had never found herself wondering what would have happened if the dead things had survived. Would they have married, or had children? What would they have looked like when they were old? Would they have gotten fat? Would they have had grey hair, or a dynasty of terrified but adoring grandchildren?   
  
She couldn’t help thinking about that. She couldn’t stop thinking about what their life together would have been like. She supposed she would marry someday – some safe, dignified pure-blood with a promising career. She couldn’t vow to be celibate for the rest of her life. She had the family honour to support, the family name to care for. But her eventual husband, whoever he was to be, would never excite her like Malfoy.   
  
She wondered if any of her female ancestors had ever been in love. Doubtless, they would have been too sensible. But this wasn’t the first time Narcissa had realized that she couldn’t be like them. She wasn’t clever enough, or cold enough. She had the beauty that they’d never needed, and nothing else.   
  
With a little cry that died (out of habit) in her throat, she saw the charred hem of a blue cape under a fallen roof-timber. It was very discoloured, but must have once been duck-egg blue satin, just like her dress.   
  
Narcissa, heedless of the fact that she was getting ash on her school-robes and under her finger-nails, heaved the blackened beam back, and stared at the recumbent figure underneath it. He looked bizarrely tidy, for someone who’d been crushed under a falling timber.   
  
He was kind of… shining. His skin was radiant; his pale hair was glowing feebly in the dimness, like a white curtain with the sun shining through. He wasn’t scarred – which was strange, because his clothes had been burnt to a crisp. But all the holes in them simply revealed patches of glowing, white skin. Narcissa would have been impressed by this, even if he hadn’t been in a fire. So many men who seemed attractive had birth-marks, or blotches underneath their fancy robes.   
  
She had always thought that she was the only creature who was flawless all the way down. Well, she supposed she was, now.   
  
But he was breathing. At first, she’d thought she was only imagining it: in the light of the flickering fires that were still scattered around the room, everything had a subtle motion. Even the walls looked as though they were breathing. But then, there was a creasing in his eye-lids: his lips parted, his nostrils flared. And, as much as she tried to tell herself that it was just the fire-light and the heat playing tricks on her, Narcissa couldn’t bring herself to doubt her own, analytical eyes. They never missed anything.   
  
He coughed, and Narcissa helped him sit up, pushing his hair back with joyful tenderness. Her name, of course, was the first word out of his mouth.   
  
“You’re alive,” she said, very glad that her grandmother wasn’t around to hear her saying something so obvious. It needed to be said, however. It wasn’t real until it was uttered: that was the first principle of magic.   
  
“I thought you were…” he gasped, looking confused and ash-smeared and radiant.   
  
Narcissa was suddenly conscious of how awful she must look. She patted the silvery knot of hair on top of her head: more hair had slipped down from it than was still tied up, so she pulled out the clip and hurled it into the wreckage.   
  
She looked like some kind of fierce fire-spirit with her hair down, and her make-up smeared – like one of the creatures in the Foe Fire – but Malfoy seemed too confused and disoriented to care.   
  
“I thought the Dark Lord wanted you dead,” he whispered, trying to hang on to her. But she wouldn’t let him get up yet. She cleared away some of the wreckage, and helped him prop his back against the wall. “I thought you were screaming.”   
  
“Me?” said Narcissa, giving him a real smile, wrinkles and all. “Never. You had a nightmare. It’s over now.”   
  
“Where is the Dark Lord?” he mumbled.   
  
“Chasing after the mudblood, I expect. It’s nothing to do with us anymore. Just rest. And, when you’ve rested, you can kiss me. I expect you’re too injured for… anything else.”   
  
Malfoy shook his head so rapidly that he swayed for a moment, overcome with dizziness. “’M not injured,” he mumbled, when he’d regained his balance.   
  
“Well, good,” she replied. “I’ll be gentle with you.”  
  
“No need,” he said, grinning. “In fact, please don’t.”


End file.
